Waterloo
by spanglemaker9
Summary: I was defeated; you won the war. But how could I ever refuse? I feel like I win when I lose. Bella hates Edward…maybe. Written for The Faithful Shipper's Abba One Shot Contest. AH
1. Chapter 1

A little while ago The Faithful Shipper blog announced an Abba One-Shot contest. I freaked, because if there's one thing I _love_, it's Abba. So I loaded up my CD changer with my collection (because I own a lot of Abba) and started listening. The only problem I was having was picking just _one_ song to inspire my one-shot, because I'm serious- I could write a one-shot about _every_ Abba song, including outtakes for all my full-length fics. Clearly I've found my muse and it's Abba. Sadly, it seems that not everyone is as inspired by Abba songs as I am and mine was the only entry. So now I'm sharing it with you instead. Hope you enjoy!

Inspired (obviously) by _Waterloo_, by Abba.

**Stephenie Meyer owns any Twilight characters that may appear in this story. The remainder is my original work. No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without my express written authorization**.

0

0

0

I hate Edward Cullen.

It was a completely irrational, juvenile response, I knew that. I should have just risen above it and refused to let him get under my skin. I was a smart woman; I shouldn't have let that shallow, irritating, pretty-boy get to me. I knew all of this and still I couldn't help it. He drove me totally and completely crazy, and he had from the minute we met.

That was two years ago, on the first day of orientation for the Graduate History program at the University of Washington. He was late to the meeting, of course. He breezed in looking like he lost his way to the photo shoot for the next Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. He was all chagrined and falsely apologetic, flashing his cute little crooked smile and raking his hands through his ridiculous auburn hair like he was actually embarrassed or something. It was absolutely pathetic the way you could hear the entire female half of the room draw in an audible breath at the sight of him. Including me. I'll admit it; my first glimpse of Edward Cullen kind of knocked me back on my ass a little. But you could hardly blame me. He was tall and he was built, but not too much, just enough. He had a face that would make angels weep; cheekbones for days and a jaw line you could sharpen knives on, and his eyes made panties drop on cue. And don't even get me started on that hair; it made you think bad, dirty thoughts.

And he absolutely knew it.

He swaggered into that orientation meeting two years ago exactly the way he swaggered through the next two years of our Ph. D. program, leaving a wake of swooning females behind him wherever he went. Hell, even the men swooned over him in some sort of sick, envious, hero-worshipping thing. Because unlike the average History Ph.D. candidate, Edward Cullen had a social life. The rest of us huddled in our grad carrels in the library on Friday nights instead of going out; our social interactions were limited to harassing the students we taught in our Intro to World History undergrad classes; we blinked like moles on the rare occasions that we emerged into the sun. Edward Cullen lived. He dated. He arrived to every seminar trailed by some hot young undergrad, flustered, late, beaming his charming smile. And he was always racing away afterwards, his life full of plans, social engagements, and friends. He was like a different species, a rock star dropped down in the midst of bookish history grads.

Oh, and did I mention he was loaded? Like it wasn't enough that he was born with a ridiculous genetic advantage, he won the familial lottery as well. Here I was, up to my eyes in student loans that I'd be paying back for the rest of my life and he was driving around campus in some sleek little brand-new sports car. His family probably donated like crazy to a million top tier colleges, ensuring that he'd walk out of here with his degree and straight into some cushy tenure track teaching position while the rest of us scrambled for pathetic little part-time adjunct gigs. Assuming he even decided to get a paying job. Because he probably didn't even have to. Appalling.

And here was the most galling thing of all about Edward Cullen; he wasn't stupid. I _really_ wanted him to be. When he first sailed into that orientation meeting, I was ready to write him off as some rich kid killing time in college until his trust fund kicked in. And maybe the trust fund part was true, but he was not killing time. He was smart. And while he might show up late and looking freshly-fucked to every seminar, when he opened his pretty mouth, he was thoughtful, insightful and completely prepared. How dare he? It was so unfair.

So I hated Edward Cullen. It might not have been a problem at all if the universe was just, but it wasn't. It was a big department, with nearly a hundred students pursuing various Master's degrees and Ph.D.'s, in all different areas of specialty. If life was fair, he'd be the Vietnam War specialist I'd pegged him for that first day. Or he'd be lost in the masses of Medievalists, far away from me. But no; he was specializing in the British Navy in the nineteenth century. And I was specializing in France under the reign of Napoleon. His specialty pretty much went to war with my specialty. Just like I was at war with Edward Cullen.

We mixed it up constantly. History might seem set in stone, but what you discover once you dig in, and what I love about it, is that really, it's all open to interpretation. There were people and there were events and whether this happened _because_ of that or as a _reaction to_ that is really all about how you interpret the facts. And Edward Cullen and I always seemed to interpret those facts completely differently. It had led to some nasty knock-down, drag out fights. Our graduate advisor, Dr. Banner, has had to intercede on more than one occasion and send us each off to our respective corners (or carrels, as the case may be). And while he was argumentative and maddening (and often _completely _wrong, in my opinion), he was never uninformed. It was enraging.

But we were in our last year of study and starting work on our dissertations, which meant that soon we'd graduate and I'd never see his infuriating, beautiful, arrogant, stunning face ever again. Thank God.

I studied up all summer on my dissertation subject, so that I'd have it settled the second the fall quarter started and I could jump right in. I pretty much steam-rolled right over Dr. Banner at our first meeting, overwhelming him with ideas, books, and citations and he just threw up his hands and wished me luck. I dove right in to my research and from the very start of the semester; I pretty much holed up in the library, settling in for the duration.

I felt fortunate in my carrel assignment this year. It was in the very back of the fourth floor. The fourth floor was where old history books went to die. It was deep into the stacks, full of musty old tomes about arcane, obscure historical subjects. No one ever went there unless there was some tiny tidbit of knowledge they couldn't find anywhere else. It was so infrequently visited that they didn't even keep the lights in the stacks on all the time. They were on motion sensors, only flickering on when some student eventually wandered in. I loved it. So quiet and peaceful. The only thing to mar my carrel's perfection was that Edward's carrel was next door to mine…._of course_, because I seem fated to be haunted by him until the second I graduate. But I could just shut the door and turn on my ipod and pretend he wasn't even in the building, which is exactly what I did from the start of the quarter.

Well, I tried to ignore him, anyway. But that was hard when I kept hearing the sound of his low, rumbling voice interspersed with a high, insipid giggle, like I was hearing tonight. It was okay when I was locked in my carrel, but I was out in the stacks, hunting down a book. It was so empty up here that every little sound carried. And right now the sound of Edward's flirtatious conversation with some girl was reverberating off the books on all sides of me. I still hadn't found my book and because of Edward's distracting conversation, I'd now forgotten exactly what the call number was. So in a huff I headed back to my carrel where I'd scrawled it on my notepad.

When I rounded the corner, I spotted the source of the giggling. Lauren Whatshername. Tall, skinny, with long, straight, fake-blonde hair. Pretty in a cheap, generic, sorority-girl kind of way. Perfect for him. She was an undergrad enrolled in a section of Intro to World History. The section that Edward taught, naturally. I was pretty sure her major was Fashion Merchandising, but this semester she'd developed a sudden, passionate interest in all things history and I found her loitering around the department all the time in search of Edward. I was convinced that Edward Cullen was single-handedly responsible for at least a twenty-five percent uptick in female enrollment in the undergrad Intro to History classes since he started teaching them last year. His sections were always packed and students were always desperate to transfer out of mine. Desperate to escape me and my Red Pen of Death. They hated me. Shiftless little bastards.

Tonight Lauren had apparently gotten more determined than usual and tracked him back to his carrel. Or hell, he probably invited her. He was leaning on the door frame, arms crossed casually over his chest, smiling and nodding while Lauren chattered away, thumbs hooked in her backpack straps in a way that made her tits thrust out in Edward's direction. I rolled my eyes as I made my way behind her to my own door.

"Hey, Swan."

Edward's acknowledgement startled me, especially as it interrupted Lauren mid-sentence. I looked back over my shoulder at them. Edward was still leaning on the door, but there was a tension in his face that wasn't there before and Lauren was glaring daggers at me. He was probably just anxious that I was going to light into him about dating undergrads. It wasn't technically against the rules, but it was heavily frowned upon. Not that that seemed to be stopping either one of them.

"Hey," I muttered before turning back and ducking into my carrel.

As soon as I was inside, Lauren started up again.

"So you're here studying like, all the time?"

"Um, yeah," Edward replied. "I'm working on my dissertation. It takes a lot of time."

"Don't you get lonely back here?"

He chuckled. It was just wrong that he sounded so good doing that, "No. And as you see, I'm not always alone." Was he referring to me? Was he crazy? For all the interaction we had back here, he might as well be alone. I really wanted to get out of here and away from their ridiculous conversation, but I couldn't find where exactly I'd scribbled down that call number.

"Oh…right," Lauren responded lamely. "So do you ever, you know, take a break? Like for coffee or something?"

"Uh...yeah, now and then, sure."

"Well," Lauren's voice shifted tone and I felt like I could almost see her smiling seductively and leaning closer to him. I scowled involuntarily and pushed my reading glasses up on top of my head. Where the fuck was that call number? "If you ever stop for coffee some night and you want some company, you should call me."

"Oh, well, that's…um, it's nice of you to offer. I should really get back to work here."

My hands stopped shuffling papers momentarily. Did I hear that right? Was he shutting her down? I heard Lauren laugh awkwardly and shift her back pack.

"Oh! Sure, I didn't mean to hold you up. I was just in the area and thought I'd stop by and say hi."

I snorted softly. In the area. Sure. In the back of the fourth floor, the Graveyard of History Books.

"That was nice of you. See you," he said, and I could hear him retreating back into his carrel.

"Right…See ya."

There was a pause, like she was lingering, then I heard her steps as she retreated back through the stacks. I finally found the notepad where I'd scribbled the call number and ripped off the corner of the page, heading back out to track down my book. Edward's door was still standing open, but I kept my eyes firmly averted as I passed.

"Working late tonight, Swan?"

I stopped in my tracks and turned to look at him. My adrenaline flared every time he so much as looked sideways at me. It must be the result of getting into so many arguments with him for the past two years, some sort of Pavlovian response to his presence. He was sitting in his desk chair, but he'd pushed back from the desk. He was slouched down and his ridiculously long legs were splayed out in front of him, nearly filling up the closet-like carrel. He had one elbow propped on his desk, twirling his pen in his fingers. Damn, he had long fingers. He was casually dressed, just jeans and a faded green button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but he still managed to carry it off like a movie star. History scholars just shouldn't look like that. It was wrong.

"Yes, Cullen, just like I do every night," I responded shortly. I should have just left it there and kept walking, but something made me keep blabbing. "What happened to your cute little undergrad?"

"Who, Lauren?"

I rolled my eyes, but nodded.

"She was just saying hello."

I snorted in laughter. "Sure she was."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I held up my hands in defense. "Whatever, Cullen. It's none of my business. Just watch your step around the undergrads. Especially the ones in your class."

"I'm not dating her," he snapped.

"Yeah, I'm sure _dating_ doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. Whatever you choose to call it, you'd better be careful, that's all."

He narrowed his eyes at me and sat up a little. "She's just some girl in one of my classes. There's nothing going on there. Really, nothing."

"You don't need to convince me, Cullen. I was just telling you to be careful. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to find."

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but then shut it and shook his head. I didn't hang around to argue with him any further.

The book wasn't on the shelves, which irked me no end. I mean, really, a monograph about the manufacture of cannons in France in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Who the hell would want that but me? In a huff I headed down to the main floor, to the reference desk. My friend Angela worked there as part of her work study. Since it wasn't circulation, technically she wasn't supposed to be looking up the check-out records, but she did it for me as a favor now and then.

"Hey, Angela," I called as I leaned on the reference desk.

Angela looked up from her computer monitor, squinting at me with her slightly myopic gaze, the hallmark of the history student. "Oh, hey, Bella! How's it going?"

I shrugged, "The usual scintillating Thursday night. The library, my carrel, the fifth coalition of the Napoleonic war…thrilling stuff."

She laughed a little. "I know what you mean. I swear I don't know why I bother to pay rent on an apartment with all the hours I log in here."

"Right? Hey, there's a book I'm looking for and it's not on the shelves. Could you take a peek and tell me if it's checked out or just misplaced?"

"Sure, hand it over." She extended her hand for my mauled scrap of paper. I'd been clutching it so tightly in my hand during that exchange with Cullen that it was now just a little wrinkled rag. While Angela looked up the book, I took a moment to straighten up and stretch my back. My glasses had gotten all tangled up in my hair and when I pulled them free, the pencil I was using to secure my messy knot slipped out and rolled away. I spent five minutes peering under every nearby surface but it had just vanished. I raked my hands a few times through my long, dark, messy hair, trying to make it not look so bad before reminding myself that it really didn't matter since I was just going to go lock myself in my carrel for the rest of the night anyway.

"Oh," Angela finally said, "it's checked out."

"Checked out? Who would want it? Can you tell who has it?"

"Yeah, hang on…um, Edward Cullen."

_That fucker._

"Why the hell does he have my book?" I snapped.

Angela just smiled and shrugged. "Guess you'd have to ask him that."

And that was just what I was going to do. I waved goodnight to Angela and stomped my way back up to the fourth floor and back to our carrels. His door was still open. He was bent over his desk, nose in a book, but at my approach, his head snapped up quickly.

"Why do you have my book?" I practically shouted as I marched into his carrel. I'd never been in there before and I glanced around quickly as I entered. It was neat, neater than I would have guessed he'd be. Books were arranged on the shelf over the desk and stacked in tidy piles off to either side of his laptop. There was a notepad and pen off to one side and on the very back of the desk, there was a small replica of the HMS Victory, the ship Admiral Nelson commanded against Napoleon. For just a second, I thought about how endearing it was that he had a model ship in his carrel. Then I told myself to shut the fuck up and stop finding anything about Edward Cullen endearing.

"Excuse me? What book?"

"Iron Weapons Production in France, 1810-1820. Angela said you checked it out. Why?"

He leaned back in his chair and smiled that infuriating smile of his that I'm sure he thought was so effective with the opposite sex. He might have been right about that but there was no way I was giving him the satisfaction of acknowledging it in any way. I just kept my face stony and stared him down, hands on my hips.

"I didn't know that you exercised proprietary rights over it. Besides, I need it for my dissertation."

"What? Your dissertation is on the British naval actions in Spain. Why are you reading about French weaponry manufacture?"

"I changed my dissertation subject." He shrugged off-handedly.

I just blinked at him for a moment in disbelief, sure that I must have heard him wrong. "Excuse me? You did what?"

He smiled that stupid (but highly effective) smile again. "I said I changed my dissertation subject. I'm doing British blockades of French ports during the Napoleonic Wars. So I guess I need the book now, too."

I swear to God my vision went red. I just stood there and stared at him with my mouth hanging open and the stupid bastard had the audacity to actually smile at me, like it was some massive joke. France and Napoleon were _mine_! My subject, my specialty for the past two years, _my dissertation_! And now he sails in like Mr. History Rock Star and sits himself down right in the middle of my field of research like he has a right to it or something!

I was fuming, beyond pissed, I had absolutely no words. Cullen seemed to guess that, because that stupid, pretty-boy smile just got wider. "Close your mouth, Swan. You're going to drool in a minute."

In spite of myself, my jaw snapped shut. Not that I did it for him, or that I cared if I drooled in front of him. Because I didn't. Right now I was fighting down the urge to do something really juvenile like call him names or start throwing projectiles at him.

"Yeah," he finally drawled, stretching his arms over his head lazily. I had to keep my eyes away from the thin line of skin he exposed as his shirt rode up. It looked smooth…and nice…_stop it!_ "Seems like our areas of research might overlap a bit. Guess we'll have to just learn how to share."

"Alright then, how about we start now?" I held out my hand expectantly. "The book?"

Without taking his eyes off my face, he reached out and pushed a little red-bound book on his desk closer to the corner, challenging me to come and take it. _Stupid Edward Cullen; like you're going to intimidate me._ I stepped forward and wrapped my hand around the spine. His hand shot out like a striking snake and closed around my wrist. I froze, momentarily stunned by the feel of his long, strong fingers on my skin, and by the little frisson of excitement that ran through me at the unexpected contact. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look back at his face. The intensity in his eyes unnerved me.

"What's the problem?" I finally managed to force out, my voice sounding far weaker than I would have liked.

"There will be no hogging of finite resources, Swan. I'll be coming to get it back later."

I snapped out of whatever freaky spell he'd put me under and snatched my hand away, still gripping the book. "Fine! You know where to find me."

"Yes, I do," he murmured.

We stared at each other for just another second before I turned and stormed back to my carrel, slamming the door hard behind me.

It took me a good hour to work off the adrenaline spike from our confrontation, but eventually I did, and fell into my usual researching groove. At some point during the evening I got inspired by some flicker of an idea and raced off on a research tangent, hauling piles of books in off the shelves, reading and cross-referencing, looking to draw some sort of conclusion from all the disparate facts. I kept the door to my carrel closed and no one ventured to the back of the fourth floor. It was absolutely silent. I slipped into a suspended state, down the rabbit hole of research, lost in my books and the minutiae of history.

"_Bella…"_

Oh, his voice was so nice… so deep and rich and all honeyed seduction.

"_Bella…"_

I could almost feel his words, blowing over me, heating my skin, tickling my hair, whispering in my ear.

"_Bella…"_

My name sounded so wonderful when his voice wrapped around it, caressed it. Almost like hands…hands on my body…pressure…fingers….

"Hey, Swan."

I woke with a start. Someone was shaking my shoulder. I picked my head up off my crossed arms, my loose hair falling in a dark curtain around my face. I reached up with one hand and raked it back, blinking to orient myself. I was in my carrel, leaning on my desk, my computer's screen saver cycling in front of me. Edward was standing just to my left, his hand still wrapped around my shoulder. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together and his expression was stormy, puzzled, and…some other thing I couldn't quite name in my sleep-addled state.

"What are you doing in here?" I mumbled, my voice all rough and throaty from sleep.

He closed his eyes and shook his head a tiny bit. "I was just leaving and I saw your light was still on. You fell asleep."

I scrubbed a hand over my face and moaned, stretching my back. "What time is it?"

"Uh….oh, um, twelve ten."

"What?? Oh, fuck!" I sat up sharply, now fully awake. The bus schedule switched over to every hour at midnight and I just missed it. I couldn't catch another one now for over forty five minutes and it was freezing outside.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I mumbled as I started shutting down my laptop. "I just missed the bus."

He stood there in silence for a minute as I stuffed books into my backpack. "Did you need something, Cullen? Come to reclaim your book?"

"Huh? No, keep it," he shook his head absently. "Listen, you shouldn't wait outside alone at this time of night. I'll drive you home."

I gave a short, sharp laugh. "Don't worry about it, Cullen. I'm a big girl."

"Yeah, no doubt about that, but you're still not standing out at the bus stop. Get your stuff. Let's go."

"Quit ordering me around!"

"Whatever!" he said on an exhale, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Will you just come get in the car and let me drive you home?"

"Fine, fine! You're so bossy!"

"And you're so prickly!"

"Whatever."

"So eloquent, Cullen."

"Shut it, Swan."

We kept that up all the way out to his car, his shiny black car. I'd seen him pull into the parking lot in it plenty of times, but I'd never really been up close to it, and I'd certainly never been _in_ it before. It was nice. Really nice. It smelled like new leather and…Edward inside. I don't know why I knew what Edward smelled like, but I did. And this car smelled like Edward. It was nice.

Once I settled into the passenger seat, I fell silent, not sure how we were supposed to talk to each other.

Edward cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Um, so where do you live?"

"Oh, right… Grosvenor Apartments. It's on Hawthorne, just past Crimmins. Do you know where that is?"

He just nodded and pulled out of the library parking lot.

"You don't have a car?" he finally asked.

I shook my head. "Too expensive. Usually the bus schedule works out fine, as long as I don't pass out in the library."

"Do you do that often?"

"What, fall asleep at the library?"

He nodded.

"Now and then."

"You're working too hard. You've been buried in your dissertation since before the quarter started."

"Well, I'm a Ph.D. candidate, Cullen. You are, too, the last time I checked. Living for our dissertation is kind of what we do."

He snorted and shrugged a little, staring straight ahead. Damn, his jaw should be illegal. I looked away, back out of the passenger side window. "I'm just saying, you should take better care of yourself. Maybe get out of the library once in a while. You know, a social life?"

Now it was my turn to scoff. "Yeah, right."

"You don't have a…um, a boyfriend or anything? You know, somebody to do stuff with?"

"Cullen, you've known me for two years and you see how much time I spend at the library. Where would I fit in a boyfriend? I'm delighted that your time management skills allow you to squeeze in an army of hot little underclassmen, but we're not all as…ahem, talented as you."

He turned his head to scowl at me and I just smiled back.

"For your information, I'm not exactly the manwhore you seem to think I am."

"And the blonde stick figure earlier tonight?"

"I told you, there's nothing going on there. Not with her, not with anybody."

That made me pause for a second. "Really? You're not nail…_seeing_ anybody?"

He looked at me with an inscrutable expression before shaking his head a little and looking forward again.

I sat in silence for a minute thinking about that. Why was I thinking about that? Who cares? I don't. Absolutely not. I don't care where Edward Cullen sticks his….okay, really, stop thinking about that. "Turn here," I muttered.

He pulled to a stop at the edge of the parking lot in front of my complex. It was a cluster of two story buildings set at odd angles to each other.

"Which building is yours?"

I pointed, "In the back."

"I'll walk you."

"Don't be ridiculous! It's two hundred feet!"

"It's two hundred feet in the dark and there's no one outside. Half of these street lights are burned out. I'm walking you. Just get out and let's go."

"Ugh! So pushy!"

But I climbed out of his car and shouldered my bag and led the way down the twisting dark path between the buildings. We didn't say anything else on the short walk to my door. Edward stood just behind me as I fished out my keys.

"Ground floor?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Do your windows lock?"

I turned around to stare at him, wide-eyed. "What is _with_ you? When did you turn into Mr. Safety?"

He shrugged awkwardly. "You're a woman living alone. It's just common sense. You don't want some creep climbing in your window while you sleep."

"Well, I'm fine. Listen, thanks for the ride, Cullen. I do appreciate it."

He was still standing less than an arms' length away from me, which all of a sudden felt kind of close. Too close? Not too close. Just…close. He was watching my face again, that funny look back in his eyes. I just stared back, waiting for him to acknowledge my thank you. He didn't say anything, but to my stunned surprise, he slowly reached a hand up and hooked a strand of my hair with his finger where it was blowing across my face. His knuckle brushed my cheek briefly and it gave me chills. Gently, he tucked the hair back behind my ear. Edward Cullen was touching my hair. Why the hell was Edward touching my hair? It was nice. Nice? Yes, I think I liked Edward touching my hair. Wait. I have no business liking Edward's hand on my hair. What the fuck?

"You had a little thing in your hair," he said, his voice low and rough.

Oh, I had a thing in my hair. Okay. Except this still felt weird, and he was still sort of tucking my hair back. My eyes flickered to his outstretched arm and then back to his face and that seemed to snap him out of it. He pulled his hand back and cleared his throat. I shifted my keys to my other hand. Alright, weird, awkward moment has passed. I turned and unlocked the door.

"See you later, Cullen," I said over my shoulder as I opened the door. "Thanks again for the lift."

"No problem, Swan," he said, his voice and demeanor back to normal. "See you around."

I shut the door in his face. What the hell?

0

0

0

I brushed off the post-drive weirdness pretty quickly. Cullen made that easy by being his usual arrogant, irritating self the next day when I saw him. Plus he had another skinny blonde undergrad trailing after him through the history department. It was disgusting, I didn't care what he said about them.

And the overlapping research thing was turning out to be a huge pain in the ass. I was used to prowling whole swaths of the history section unimpeded. No one ever checked out these books, and I had my run of the subject. Well, I _used_ to have my run of the subject. Now, every time I tried to track down a book, it was missing. And every time I asked Angela to see where it was, the answer was always the same; checked out to Edward Cullen. At least twice a day I was in his stupid carrel, negotiating the use of some book he'd checked out just ahead of me. He seemed to take delight in holding me hostage with research, smirking that obnoxious, Edward-smirk as I begged and wheedled and negotiated time with the materials. He always handed them over eventually, but inevitably at some point in the evening he'd need to check something in one and he'd invade my carrel. I didn't even bother to close my door anymore, since I was just going to have to get up and open it when he started pounding. And it wasn't like he would just take his damned book and go. He'd want to _talk_ about it, which inevitably led to arguing about it, since we rarely saw eye to eye on anything. And God forbid I actually win an argument. He'd sulk away in a huff only to come storming back an hour later, waving some other book under my nose that he claimed proved his point. It was distracting and exhausting…and maybe just a tiny bit fun.

That's pretty much how Friday night was panning out so far. I'd shown up at the library at four after my last class let out, armed with a list of call numbers for books I thought might be useful for what I was researching today. I passed through the stacks quietly, running my fingertips over the spines, soaking up this happy little flush of pleasure I always got in the stacks surrounded by books. I was still an aisle over from where I needed to be so I swung around the end of the stack to the next row and nearly ran right into Edward.

"Holy shit!"

"Hey!"

"Jesus, Cullen, are you lying in wait or something?"

"I'm looking for a book, Swan, same as you," he growled. He already had three books under one arm.

"Whatever, just step aside, please. This is my section." He scowled at me for a second, but then took an elaborate step back, sweeping his arm in an exaggerated bow. I huffed, but turned to the stacks, perusing call numbers. I finally found it, five rows up. I reached and my fingertips just brushed the spine when I felt heat all along my back. I nearly gasped and then I saw Edward's long fingers wrap around the spine just above mine, pulling it free, lowering it until my hand could close around it easily. I turned to thank him and he was still standing right behind me, almost up against me.

Somehow, even in the crummy, buzzing, fluorescent death lights overhead, his hair was still a gorgeous riot of colors, all russets and browns and glints of gold. And his eyes. I honestly had never noticed the color of his eyes before. So green, I'd never seen eyes so green. God just loves some people more than others. And God adored Edward Cullen.

"Thanks," I muttered, clutching my book against my chest with both hands. His face was set and fierce, and a muscle was ticking in his jaw.

"No problem," he murmured.

And there it was again. That weirdness from that night a few weeks back outside my apartment. He was like a snake charmer, this man. I get it; the army of love-sick girls. But they were hopeless little undergrads and I was a smart, almost-professional academic. I could do better than that. I needed to stay away, and I definitely needed to stop staring into those crazy green eyes.

I looked down, he stepped back, and I turned away and headed on to the next aisle. And that was that.

Except when I started to hunt for the next books on my list, they were all missing. I don't know why I even bothered to check, but I did. I went down to see Angela and she looked them up. All checked out to Edward Cullen. Really, Cullen? _Really? _The topography of the Mont St Jean escarpment? You need to read that?

It was like he was getting in my way on purpose. And you can mess with me in a lot of ways, but you do not mess with my research. I traveled the well-worn path back up to the fourth floor, back to Edward's carrel. The door was open, he was bent over his desk, as usual.

"What the fuck, Cullen?" I shouted as I burst through his door.

He started, and leaned back in his chair.

"Can I help you with something, Swan?"

"Mont St Jean!" I said, waving a hand for emphasis. "Hand it over!"

"What?"

"You know what I'm talking about. The topography of the Mont St Jean escarpment. Why do you even have it? You're doing naval blockades in France and Mont St Jean is where the Battle of Waterloo was..."

He stood slowly and in the tight confines of his carrel, I was really aware of how tall he was.

"I _know _where the Battle of Waterloo was fought, Swan. There's a theory that the river traffic…"

"Save it," I snapped. "I swear, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were pulling this shit just to get under my skin."

He had his fingers on a book on his desk, _my _book, no doubt, and he slowly took a step closer to me, sliding the book across the desk towards me at the same time. "Is it working?" he murmured softly.

"What? You're doing it on purpose?" I asked in confusion. "You _are_ trying to fuck with me? Why would you do that?"

"I'm asking you again," he said, his voice low and rough, "is it working? Am I getting under your skin?"

I just stood there, staring at him in confusion, not even sure what we were talking about anymore. I _was_ sure that he was still moving closer to me and now he was positively invading my personal space. I was getting all flustered and I could feel my face flush, both from the confrontation and from this crazy, fluttery feeling taking up residence in my stomach. Why was he standing so close to me? And why was he messing with me on purpose? I knew we were adversarial, but why go through so much effort just to bug me?

"Yes," I finally said, my voice hardly audible. "You're getting under my skin."

"Well…" he whispered, because now he was standing right in front of me and he was fixing me with those deadly eyes again, "that's good, then."

"Do you want to be under my skin?" I whispered in return. What? Did I just say that to him? Fucking snake-charmer voo doo.

"I want to be everywhere," he growled. And then it happened. His hands shot out and gripped my head, holding me still, and his mouth came down on mine. Oh….God. Edward Cullen was kissing me. Why was he kissing me? And it was nice. Really, really nice. Of course he would be a phenomenal kisser along with all of his other unfair advantages.

I stiffened a little and turned my head just a hair, thinking I was going to pull away and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing pulling that shit with me, but somehow my mouth wasn't following the same plan as the rest of me and before I knew it, I was kissing him back. If I thought him kissing me was nice, us kissing each other was _so much better_. At my apparent (blatant?) surrender, he took a step closer and pressed the entire length of himself up against me, his fingers sliding back into my hair, cradling my head.

It felt good, so good that I gasped a little. And my open mouth was all the invitation he needed. Edward's tongue slipped past my lips and touched mine and I think I moaned a little. I would have been embarrassed, except he did, too. My hands defected just the way my lips had and reached out for him, gripping his shoulders as he gripped my face. He plunged his tongue deeper into my mouth. Oh…okay. This is getting….oh, hell. I told myself to shut up and stop thinking and slid my hands up into his hair. It felt better than it looked, and his tongue was doing wicked things to mine and his long, lithe body was pressed up against all the right parts of me. One of his hands left my hair and his arm came down around my waist, pulling me in and up onto my toes and that was…better. We aligned in all the right ways.

Now that he could reach, his lips left my mouth and he made his way down to my neck. Oh, that was nice, too. Wait. What? Why am I standing in Edward's carrel, making out with _Edward Cullen_?? Yeah, sure he was a snake-charmer but this was ridiculous. And how awkward was this going to be tomorrow when he showed up with another hot young undergrad in tow? The thought made me feel sick.

"Wait," I murmured, turning my head to the side. His tongue was in the process of drawing a line up to my earlobe as I brought my hands to his shoulders and pushed gently on him. He didn't let me go, but the tongue went away. His lips hovered right next to my ear.

"What's wrong?" he whispered. Oh, hot breath right over my earlobe. Nice.

"We can't do this. This is…"

"Why not?" His mouth was still next to my ear, his lips brushing it as he spoke, which was really distracting. One hand gently caressed my scalp, the other stroked the skin of my waist where my shirt had ridden up. He was making it very hard to think clearly.

"I don't do hook-ups like this," I said softly.

"Good," he said, "Neither do I."

"What?"

He tipped his head forward a little, his forehead resting against the side of my face. Damn, he smelled good.

"Do you really not get it? What I've been doing here?"

I shook my head softly, which he couldn't see, but he could feel it. Finally he picked his head up to look at me, those snake-charmer eyes just inches from mine.

"I'm still doing the British Navy in Spain for my dissertation."

"What? You lied about that?"

He sighed and closed his eyes. "I fibbed a little, yes. I needed to get you to talk to me, _deal_ with me."

"Excuse me?" I was stiffening, trying to pull away from him, but he wasn't letting me go.

"Tell me something, Bella, if I asked you out a month ago, what would you have said?"

Involuntarily, I snorted dismissively. Damn, some habits are really hard to break.

"Exactly," he smirked. "You'd have shut me down. All I did was check out a few books I knew you'd need. It got you into my carrel, and it got me into yours. And you talked to me."

"Are you saying you've wanted this…"

"For a long time," he finished, his eyes growing dark, his arm tightening around my waist.

Oh…

"What about all the girls?" I asked. I wanted to tell myself to just shut up, but I also wanted him to answer.

"What girls?"

"The ones you're always with."

He shrugged and scowled, "Like Lauren? I mean, yeah, I get that she's coming on to me, but I'm not interested. But she's always showing up, following me around, asking me questions about the class. And I _am_ her teacher. It's not like I can tell her to go away."

"But there were others…"

"Freshman girls with crushes on their teacher. I told you…not interested. There's only one girl I'm interested in, and I have been for quite a while now."

He leaned forward, kissing me gently on the corner of my mouth, on my jaw, down on my neck... he was so very good at that. Once again, all my parts had different plans than I did. My eyes fell closed and my hand slid up to the back of his neck, tangling in his hair where it curled over his collar.

"How long?" I managed to murmur.

He kept kissing, nipping, licking my neck. "Do you remember that argument we got into last year about the Trafalgar campaign?"

"Mmmm," I said. "I mean, _yes_, I remember. You were such a jackass about that."

He chuckled a little as he worked his way back up to my face, to my mouth, and I was really wanting him to get there already.

"I wanted to rip your goddamned clothes off and take you on the conference table," he whispered.

Oh, hell. I was done. His confession did all kinds of things to my body, making me flush and get damp and fuck this…I tightened my grip on his hair and pulled his face back to mine. His lips crushed mine, his sinful tongue working its magic on mine again. His hand on my waist slid lower, down over my ass to the back of my thigh, pulling me in closer to him. He pivoted, bringing me with him, until I was pressed against his desk and he was pressed against me. All of him. Pressed against all of me. And…hello, there. That felt nice. Really nice. But I was too short, or he was too tall. I reached back and planted my hands on his desk, boosting myself up until I was sitting on it.

He made a little growling sound in the back of his throat and pushed forward to stand in between my knees. His hands came down to grip the backs of my thighs, sliding down until he'd hooked my knees. With one swift tug, he'd aligned us perfectly. Holy hell. Now I could really feel him, pressed in exactly the right spot. This was so hot and intoxicating and I really wanted a whole lot more.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, allowing myself to just give in, kiss him back all the way, and touch him just the way I wanted to. Because now I got it. The adrenaline rush every time I saw him, the arguing, the hating…it wasn't hate, it was _lust_. I am so stupid. I didn't hate Edward Cullen, I _wanted_ him, more than I've ever wanted anyone. And this maddening, irritating man said he wanted me, too. He might have lied to get me, and waged an unfair war, but who the hell cared? If this is losing, I surrender. I'm waving the white flag, throwing down my weapons, the whole nine yards. Come on, England, storm the French ports. Bonaparte's going down.

"Do you know how many times I've thought about this?" he murmured against my mouth.

He rocked his hips at the same time and I gasped a little before I answered, "Thought about what?"

"Having you like this, in my carrel, on my desk. Every damned night, knowing you were right on the other side of the damned wall…" he trailed off as I rocked my hips against his. He hissed and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Cullen…" I whispered.

"Please don't call me that," he said, gripping my hips and rocking again. The hardness of him pressed the seam of my jeans which pressed against me and my head fell back.

"Edward…" I moaned.

His mouth attacked my neck again. "That's so much better," he muttered.

One of his hands left my hip and slid up my ribcage until he was cupping my breast. This was heading to an intense place really fast. An intense place where I really wanted to go, even as a little voice in my head was telling me to slow down.

"Do you want to slow this down?" he whispered against my ear. The hell? Can he hear me?

"We probably should," I said, before dragging his face back to mine. I was seriously addicted to his mouth.

"Yeah, probably," he said between kisses. Then he drew my bottom lip between his teeth. That was not playing fair. I couldn't very well stop him when he was doing stuff like that to me. His fingertips, those long, insane fingers, closed over my nipple and pinched slightly.

"Oh, damn," I moaned.

"Yeah," he groaned, rocking again.

"Take my shirt off," I whispered against his mouth.

"Fuck."

But he did it, closing his hands around my shirt hem and pulling it up and over my head. As soon as I was free, my hands went at his shirt buttons. I could barely work them, so he did it for me, shaking his arms free of it. Once his arms came back around me and my bare stomach was pressed against his bare stomach, I knew we were done for. There was nothing hesitant about his hands now as they came back to my breasts, kneading, rubbing, pinching through my bra. I arched myself into him and kissed him hard. His fingers tickled around my ribcage to my back and then my bra was gone. Tricksy man with the magic fingers. That was fast. But his hands on the bare skin of my breasts wiped all other thoughts away.

It didn't take long for that to stop being enough. I wanted more, I wanted his mouth there. He seemed to get that, kissing along my neck and down, down, over my collarbone, my chest and oh, yes, right there.

That mouth that was so magical on my mouth, was just as good on my breasts, as he kissed and licked and sucked, first one and then the other. Our hips were still locked together, rocking, pressing, and he was so hard. He was groaning a little bit every time we pressed together.

"Do you have anything?" I murmured, after a particularly well-angled thrust that made us both gasp. Because I was as cloistered as a nun in this grad program and hadn't touched a man in far too long. The pill was an ancient memory and the idea of carrying around condoms was laughable.

"Um, I think I have one," he murmured against my chest. "So beautiful," he continued. "Even better without your clothes." He paused long enough to look up at me through his lashes with a wicked smirk. He was so dangerous, this one. I hoped I could keep up.

He fished in the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet and produced the magic little square foil package.

"Bella, we don't have to, if you don't want to."

"Are you going to blow me off tomorrow?"

His eyes widened in shock. "What? No!"

"Okay, then. We're going to do this, right? You and me? Together?"

He nodded, biting his bottom lip as he smiled a little, his hands still digging into my hips as I raked my fingers through his hair.

"Let's start doing it, then," I said, before I pulled his mouth back to mine. There was a little awkward fumbling as he divested me of my jeans, made more awkward than it needed to be because we wouldn't stop kissing while we did it. Then another bit of fumbling while he got himself ready. Again, it probably would have been easier for him if I could have taken my hand off his cock, which I latched onto the minute it was free of his pants. But that thing was so, so pretty, who could blame me?

Soon enough he was ready and I was moaning and pressed against him and then…oh, he was inside of me.

"Jesus, Bella…" was all he said, on a long shuddering exhale.

"Edward," I whispered again. He seemed to really like hearing me say his name, because that's when he went wild, gripping my bare hips hard as he thrust into me. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and just held on to him, hooking my calves over his hips.

"You feel so good," he moaned into my ear.

"You, too."

He released one of my hips and slipped his fingers between us. I couldn't quite sort out what he was up to until he reached his goal and then I couldn't do anything but throw my head back and groan. Nobody had ever been able to do this to me before, not like this. And it was _working_. I was winding up so tight and he was pounding, the whole desk shaking.

"Are you….?" he asked.

"Yes…" I gasped and then I did, I came in a glorious flash of heat.

Edward grunted, groaned, thrust again and then he came, too, his whole face screwed up with the effort. We held onto each other as it rocketed through us and gradually ebbed. He released the death-grip he had on my hips so that he could cradle my face in his hands once again, then he leaned in and kissed me, so gently, almost reverently. I felt the fluttering take up residence in my chest all over again. Amazing. His gentle little kiss was giving me butterflies right on the heels of that earth-shattering orgasm.

As he pulled away from me just a little to clean up, I leaned back and winced, realizing that there was something very hard and prickly pressing into my back. I reached around behind me; the HMS Victory.

"I think I hurt your ship," I muttered. He leaned over to look at my back.

"I'm more worried that it hurt you. Are you okay?" He was rubbing his fingertips gently over the indentations in my back, so sweet. And I thought back to the night he gave me the lift home and walked me to my door and fussed over my window locks. How had I overlooked this side of him? Oh, right. Too busy hating his guts.

"I'm fine," I said, running my hands through his hair again.

He smiled at me, sort of tired and lazy, and leaned in to kiss me again.

"Come on, let's get you put back together," he whispered, helping me down off his desk, fishing my clothes off the floor. You'd think this would be awkward, me standing naked in Edward's carrel, all aglow with our post-coital buzz, but it really wasn't. Mostly I just wanted to do it again as soon as possible. But I shrugged back into my clothes, which took a while, as Edward kept trying to "help", which mostly consisted of him groping me wherever I hadn't managed to cover up yet.

"I don't know about you," he said, "But there is absolutely no way I'm going to read another word about the Spanish Armada tonight."

I chuckled and shook my head, "Yeah, I'm mentally fried, too."

I was looking down, tugging my shirt back into place as I spoke, and Edward startled me by grabbing me around the waist and pulling me up against him quickly.

"I hope the rest of you is still in good working order, because I really want to take you home and try that again someplace a little more conventional."

I grinned, a stupid, wide, goofy grin, as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and stood on tip toe to press my lips against his. "That sounds like an excellent idea. But just so you know, tomorrow we're getting back to work and I'm taking back all my research books, you big, fat liar."

He cupped one hand around my cheek, stroking his thumb across my cheekbone, "You can have all your damned books. And while you're at it, you can have my body, my heart, and any other parts you'd care to take."

I sighed and melted. Damn. His words were even more insidious than this looks. "I'll take all of it, thank you very much."

"It's all yours, Bella. I surrender."

He kissed me again and I was lost, my head swimming, my body tingling, and my heart pounding. All because of this beautiful, caring, intelligent, snake-charming man with his arms around me right now.

That's it. I think I might just love Edward Cullen.


	2. Why Did It Have to Be Me?

**A/N: Even as I was writing Waterloo, the Edward POV was unfolding in my head. And it really wouldn't leave me alone after I finished Waterloo, so eventually I wrote it down. I am _not _continuing Waterloo; this is it. This is just the "courtship" from Edward's POV. I'm not crazy about some of the structural elements of this, which is why I didn't post it on its own. But since I went through all the trouble of writing it, I'd figure I'd share it with you rather than let it sit on my desktop gathering dust.**

**In keeping with the ABBA theme that inspired Waterloo, I named this Why Did It Have to Be Me, which is the name of another ABBA song, and one of the few sung by one of the guys in the group.**

**Also, while Edward and Bella might be history scholar****s in this, I am not. I did research, but I'm sure it was imperfect.**

**Oh, and nobody beta'd this for me this go around. Any and all mistakes are entirely mine.**

*0*0*

Bella Swan drives me absolutely crazy.

She has driven me crazy since the first time I laid eyes on her, although the nature of the crazy has changed a bit over the course of the past two years.

My first encounter with her was at the orientation meeting for our graduate history program at UW. That day was already a disaster. I was late. That's nothing unusual; I'm always late. It's not on purpose, I swear; I think it's genetic. I really do try to be on time, and I always _think_ I am. Then I glance at the clock and it's always fifteen minutes later than I thought it was. How does that happen? I don't get it, but I've always been this way, and I'm always late to everything. And that day was no different. The disaster was compounded when I got lost looking for the seminar room where the meeting was being held. I asked someone for directions, and while she was extremely eager to help, even giving me her number in case I got lost again and needed help, she also turned out to be dead wrong. So I lost another ten minutes fruitlessly searching for a building that didn't exist.

By the time I finally found the seminar room, Dr. Banner was already in the middle of his welcoming speech. I opened the door as quietly as possible but it was no use. Nearly a hundred people turned in unison to look at me. The guy who was late on the very first day. Fantastic first impression. I smiled as apologetically as I could manage and stammered an excuse as I made my way to the first empty seat I could find, which was naturally half-way across the room. I was still ducking my head and muttering my apologies when one very pretty face materialized out of the mass of faces turned in my direction and I started stammering for an entirely different reason.

Okay, so yes, I thought she was hot from the minute I saw her. I'd have been hard-pressed not to notice that. She was petite; really little with perfect, symmetrical features. And the impression was only amplified by her pale skin and wide dark eyes. She had her hair down that day, which I would come to find was a little unusual for her. She usually kept it tangled up on her head in some sort of messy, improvised knot secured with a pen or three. But that first day it was down, tumbling loose and dark around her shoulders. She looked like a sexy china doll in jeans and a tight sweater, sitting in that lecture hall. So of course I noticed that. I also noticed her scowling at me and rolling her eyes in disgust. Then she scoffed softly and muttered something unintelligible under her breath, one perfect eyebrow arched in disbelief. Right…back to my lousy first impression.

It hardly mattered, though, because in short order, I got to know her and first impressions were a thing of the past. That woman was a holy terror. She was fierce, driven and confrontational. It took no time at all for our fellow grad students to start calling her Little Napoleon, owing to her tendancy to bulldoze through every situation and stomp her (tiny) feet until she got her way. She also got the nickname because she was specializing in Napoleonic France. It might have also had something to do with her being short. Whatever the reasons behind her nickname, we might have all chuckled behind her back when we called her Little Napoleon, but no one _ever _said it to her face. Because that girl was scary.

Anyway, so yeah...me and Little Napoleon. We didn't get along..._at all._ Whatever. It shouldn't have been a big deal. I'm a polite person. I can be nice to anyone, if I need to, for short periods of time. But that was just the problem. Little Napoleon was in my face All. The. Time.

She was specializing in Napoleonic France, of course, which was all tangled up with my specialization, the history of the British Navy. Because if you're going to study the British Navy, it's hard not to spend a lot of time on what is arguably its pinnacle, its supremacy during the Naploeonic Wars. So there she was, Little Napoleon, in every one of my classes, in every seminar I took. Sometimes the more esoteric or obscure seminars would only have two students; me and her.

And, oh my God, she was so damned argumentative! She had to argue about every goddamned thing, every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Secretly, I suspected that she resented how much the British navy _owned_ France during the war, and she liked to displace her anger on me. Whatever. Bring it on. England owned France on the water. And oh, yeah…they won that war, too. She always seemed to forget that part.

She was always trying to find some reason for England's obvious naval superiority; some secret to why Napoleon could kick ass on land, but not on the high seas. She was always shoving her crazy theories in my face, trying to get a rise out of me or catch me out on something I didn't know. Yeah, good luck with that, sweetheart.

Because here was the other really annoying thing about Little Napoleon. She thought I was stupid. At least at first. In our first graduate seminar together, it was clear that she'd dismissed me out of hand as some pretty-boy airhead who'd have nothing of substance to add to any discussion. So I schooled her…and quick. Then she resented the hell out of me for not being the moron she assumed me to be.

When she realized she couldn't hate me for being stupid, she moved on to hating me for being wealthy. She was always making snide little comments on my car or my lack of student loans. Let's be clear about something: yes, my family has a lot of money. We were fortunate that my grandfather was a kick-ass businessman who had a brilliant idea and a lot of good luck. He left us all set up with hefty trust funds that ensured that none of us would ever have to worry about money. Which was awesome. But he, and then my father after him, also left us with a healthy understanding of the obligation that goes hand-in-hand with privilege. We were never, _ever _to take it for granted. And just because we didn't have to work to put roofs over our heads didn't mean we were allowed to be idle.

My older brother, Emmett, was the one born with the passion for industry, so he took over the actual running of the company, which left me free to indulge in my passion, books and history. I was grateful for the freedom so I made sure to give back in a million other ways. I was a regular major donor to half a dozen charities and one of the scholarships that paid the tuition of several underprivileged undergrads at this very university was funded by me. Of course, I kept that part completely quiet. Whatever. Nobody's going to accuse me of being some lazy, rich playboy, certainly not Little Miss Righteously Indignant. My one frivolous indulgence was my car. So sue me. It was a sweet ride, and very fuel-efficient, when you got down to it. I only have the one, anyway. Emmett has four.

It was a long first year, battling it out with her in every class, in every study session. Everywhere I turned, there she was, all up in my face, accusing me of being wrong, practically daring me to take her on. And like I'm going to back down from that challenge? I never could. If she threw down the gauntlet, I couldn't resist picking it up. Dr. Banner, the poor bastard who had the misfortune of advising both of us, spent most of his time refereeing our arguments instead of actually guiding our studies. And whose fault was that? Not mine. She always started it. Well, almost always. Sometimes it was fun to throw stuff at her just to get a rise out of her; to watch her start sputtering and flushing, then ripping into my argument. Baiting Little Napoleon might have been one of my favorite sports.

It got worse during our second year, when we started teaching the undergrad Intro to History classes. She was just as much of a tyrant in the classroom as she was everywhere else. Almost immediately, I was besieged during my office hours with tearful undergrads asking to transfer into my sections. She must have been particularly hard on the girls, because they were always the most persistent ones, practically begging me to let them into my classes. So I started resenting her for keeping my classes packed to the gills and she resented me for being "the nice one". Fine. One more log to throw on the fire of our mutual hatred.

Once our interaction with the undergrad population increased, she started ragging on me for a whole new reason. Because now, in addition to committing the unforgivable crimes of being not-stupid and wealthy, Little Napoleon had also decided that I was a man-whore. Look, it's not my fault that a lot of young, impressionable undergrad girls tend to form crushes on any relatively attractive authority figure under the age of forty. All I did was my job, advising them on the class, listening to their problems. Yes, a few of the more persistent ones had put me in the awkward position of explaining that I wouldn't date a student, but I certainly didn't start anything and I never gave in with any of them. None of them had anything to interest me anyway. I needed more than a pretty face. I needed intelligence, confidence and someone who's passionate about something. I did have some standards, despite what _she _thought.

I did have a social life, don't get me wrong. I had friends and I dated a few women during my first year; never anything serious, as the schedule we kept didn't really allow for a lot of free time. But just the fact that I didn't sleep in the library _like some people_, coupled with the unfortunate string of love-sick undergrad girls, seemed to cement my reputation, at least in _her_ mind, that I was some ruthless, over-sexed lothario. Nothing could be further from the truth, and my existence lately had been a whole lot more cloistered monk than reckless Don Juan. Whatever. She'd made up her stubborn little mind about me and there was no changing it. Not that I cared. I didn't. At all.

The other kind of annoying thing about Little Napoleon (just add it to the list), was that she always seemed to have the most interesting books and she didn't share. If she stumbled across the mention of some book, no matter how rare and obscure, she wouldn't rest until she'd acquired it through inter-library loan. Most people just didn't have the patience or persistence required to track down some of these books. It figures that Little Napoleon wouldn't be like most people. If that book was out there, she had the tenacity of a badger in getting it. Of course, once she had it, my curiosity would invariably be piqued and I'd want a look. And the little tyrant never would let me, damned her.

In the end, that's what started it all; that's how the "Trafalgar Incident" occurred; it was all over some stupid rare book.

There was a conference room in the History Department. Although it was made available to anyone in any department looking for a space to hold a meeting, there were much better facilities elsewhere on campus, so the History conference room was only used as a last resort. Shelley, the departmental secretary, kept the keys to it and it had become customary for History grads to use it for studying between classes. We all had grad carrels, but the library was a ten minute walk away, and if you only had an hour between classes, it didn't make sense to hike all the way over there. It was dim and kind of dusty, but it served its purpose if you just wanted to get some reading done.

That's what I was heading in there to do that day; to plow through another hundred pages of my Kartock's _British Naval Frigates: Second Class_. Frigates had long been a favorite of mine and I'd really been enjoying the book. I was looking forward to diving back in. That is, until I pushed the door open and saw the familiar slim shape of Little Napoleon...Bella Swan, hunched over a stack of books at one end of the long table.

I groaned to myself and for a minute, I considered going right back out, but then her head snapped up and she swiveled around to look at the door.

Her hair was piled up on her head and speared with three pens, if I counted correctly. She had her glasses on and they'd slipped down her nose, so she had to tip her head all the way back to see me through them. It was kind of cu…stop! Little Napoleon is _not _cute. I think I established the whole yeah-she's-hot thing from the outset, but the hotness was completely negated by the badger factor.

The badger factor was dialed up to high today. The minute she registered it was me, her lip curled up in a sneer and she turned back to her book. "Oh, it's just you."

"Nice to see you, too, Swan," I muttered, circling her end of the conference table and taking a chair at the far end on the opposite side. She didn't say anything else, she just hunched back down over her book, one arm folded up with her hand cupping the back of her neck. I stared at the top of her head for another second before dropping into my seat and pulling my book out of my bag.

We read for a while in silence. Except when there's another person with you in an otherwise completely silent room, it's never really silent. Every tiny sound Swan made was amplified times a thousand and completely distracting. She wasn't even being particularly loud, but for some reason, every time she sighed, every time she shifted in her chair, every time she turned a page, my focus was completely shattered. I was really starting to get annoyed; at myself for having uncharacteristically shitty focus, and at her, just for _being_.

Finally I glanced up at her out of the corner of my eye. Well, she might be distracting me, but I clearly wasn't bothering her. She was completely absorbed in whatever it was she was reading. My eyes flicked down to the book. It was leather-bound, dusty and cracked, with yellowed pages. It looked really old. A frisson of excitement raced down the back of my neck at the sight of it. Old books just _did _something to me. I couldn't help it. My fingers itched to hold it, to examine the frontispieces, to see what it said inside…

"What are you reading?" My voice sounded epically loud in the silent space and I winced. Swan startled and squinted at me through her glasses again. I knew she only used them to read; she didn't need to peer through them to see me. It was just some tic she'd picked up to make herself look more formidable. For anyone actually intimidated by her, it might have worked, but I was unmoved.

"Um…a journal," she muttered shortly.

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. Like that was going to tell me anything.

She sighed and straightened up, flinching slightly as her back came out of its perma-curl. She was so pale. She really needed to get out more. "It's the journal of a sailor in the Spanish navy."

She said the magic word and I sat up a little straighter. "Really? When?"

She scowled at me, already annoyed at my enthusiasm. "1805. He was at the Battle of Trafalgar."

I whistled through my teeth and eyed her book with renewed interest. "How'd you lay your hands on that?"

"Inter-library loan, Cullen."

"They don't keep shit like that in the stacks, Swan. So how'd you get it?"

She sat back in her chair with a huff. "Angela, okay? She has a friend at the library in Minneapolis that houses it. It's in Rare Books, but she pulled some strings and got me listed as faculty, which I _technically_ am…"

I was laughing before she even finished. "Nice one. I love that you've dragged poor Angela into your fraud."

"Shut up, Cullen! I teach! That makes me sort of faculty."

"Yeah, we both know that's not what they mean when they make those rules."

"Well, not all of us can afford to just call up our rare book dealer when there's something we want."

I shot her a hard stare. She just stared back. She had me there. I did have a rare book dealer.

"What do you even want it for, anyway?" I was trying to sound casual, but dying to know. She stared at me for another beat before huffing and pulling her notepad closer. She reached up to fish one of those pens out of her hair and the whole precarious mess came tumbling down. I swear, I was going to buy the woman stock in a rubber band company. She made a growl of annoyance, twisted it around her hands a few times, then tossed it back over her shoulders in defeat. It really was a pretty color. Such a vicious little package inside such beautiful wrapping.

Swan began to scribble notes on her pad as she spoke. "He talks about a cluster of ships to the south. Not French or Spanish, not English."

"Aaaannnnd?" I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, clearly you've got some notion about whose ships they were. Just spit it out, Swan."

"You are so…"

"Perceptive? Intelligent? Insightful?"

"Pushy and demanding, actually." She glanced back at me, then threw her pen onto the table in frustration. She stood up and made a show of organizing her pile of stuff, which I knew meant that she was nervous. "I'm pursuing a few leads that might point to them being Portuguese."

I just stared at her in silence for a few minutes. She kept her hands busy, stuffing pages into folders. Finally she straightened up and planted her hands on her hips. "What?"

"Are you seriously telling me that you think there were Portuguese war ships at the Battle of Trafalgar?"

"Maybe! Why do you even care, Cullen?"

I stood up abruptly. "What, like I don't know a damned thing about Trafalgar? Do you remember who you're talking to here?"

"Jesus, like you've cornered the market on it! Like if you don't know it, then it's not out there to be known! What pisses you off more, Cullen? That I'm encroaching on your British Naval turf or that I might be right?"

"I'm not pissed off, I just think it's a ridiculous idea and I'm trying to save you the time and energy of chasing your tail like this!"

"Oh, bullshit! You are pissed! Because you know what it means if it's true! That the British weren't so almighty dominant on the water…that they had _help_!"

"Oh, so because some random sailor that no one's ever heard of before idly makes mention of some ships that he couldn't readily identify, that means the Portuguese entered the Third Coalition months before they actually did? Are you honestly proposing rewriting history like that, Swan?"

"You and I both know that history gets re-written every day based on the evidence that's uncovered."

"And you're going to be the one to re-define the most decisive naval battle of the nineteenth century? Really, Swan?"

"What's the matter, Cullen? Angry that your precious British Navy might not have been the all-mighty powerhouse you make them out to be? Or are you pissed that you didn't find it first?" Her mouth curled up in a satisfied smirk as she crossed her arms over her chest and drew a deep breath.

I saw red. I was furious. We were still standing at opposite ends of the conference table; our voices had gradually risen until we were shouting at each other. Our eyes were bright with anger, we were both breathing hard. I had no idea what had just come over me. Yes, she was pushing all my buttons and getting a rise out of me, but she always did that. Why the hell was I so irrationally angry about her stupid, crazy theory?

And that's when I felt it; the awareness coursed through my body.

I was _hard_. As a rock. My dick was fully, painfully erect. For Little Napoleon. _No!_ Not for _her_. I was just…excited. Or something. Some weird switch got flipped in my head or some wires got crossed. My head was thinking 'angry' and my body was thinking… 'sex'. Then it happened- my body assaulted my head with a flood of raunchy imagery. Of Swan, of Swan naked, of Swan laid out on this conference table, of me bending over her, taking Swan, hard and hot, Swan's nails digging into my back as I pounded into her and she screamed out my name…

I broke out in a cold sweat. I hunched over, because my hard on had not diminished in the slightest, especially not after I imagined sliding my hand up around that pale thigh and…fuck! Stop it! What the hell? Was I some thirteen-year-old kid? What the fuck was wrong with me? Stuff like this just didn't happen to me. Especially not when I'm looking at Little Napoleon.

She was still standing there, arms tightly crossed, glaring. As she watched me stutter and stammer, because all my ability to speak coherently had fled, her eyebrows knit together and she looked concerned.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Feeling ill at the thought of my genius dissertation proposal?"

This was where I was supposed to lob it back to her, make some snide comment and knock her argument clean out of the water. But I still couldn't speak. I couldn't get past what had just happened to me…what was _still_ happening to me, because it wasn't going away.

When I continued to stay silent, she scowled again and then huffed in awkward irritation. "Whatever, Cullen. I didn't ask for your opinion in the first place, so kindly stop sticking it in where it's not wanted."

I groaned softly.

_Jesus, don't say that. Not right now._

She started stuffing her books into her bag, getting ready to leave. Thank God. Go…get out of here, and maybe this raging, throbbing hard on will go with you. "It's my research anyway," she was saying, not looking at me, "So just stay out of it. And don't even think about asking to see the journal."

She swung her backpack up on to her shoulder and turned to look at me again. I just grimaced and hung on to the edge of the table, praying she wouldn't notice it. Damn, why did I have to be so tall? She kept her eyes on my face, however. I wish I could say the same. My traitorous gaze was busy noticing that her breasts looked fantastic in that tight t-shirt. _Stop, already_.

"You better take it easy, Cullen," she muttered. "You look like shit."

"Thanks," I finally choked out, and then squeezed my eyes shut in embarrassment. Swan left the room, letting the door slam behind her, and I finally exhaled. Carefully I lowered myself back into my chair. What. The. Fuck. Was. That?

*0*0*

I saw Little Napoleon a few more times that week, thankfully with no humiliating repeat of the conference room incident. She was as snarky and hateful as she always was. I easily slipped back into my usual baiting, adversarial stance and everything seemed normal. I chalked up that freakish reaction to some strange case of crossed wires in my head. Because I wasn't really attracted to her. I couldn't be. I mean, yes, she was beautiful; I'd always noticed that. But there had to be more to a woman than that for me, and I didn't have that with Swan. No way. Impossible.

Plus she hated me. We hated each other, because it was mutual. No, what happened that day, my reaction to her, was just some freaky aberration. I needed to get laid, clearly. It had been too long. That was all.

Unfortunately, I had a massive paper due in a week and a half, so there was nothing I could do about the getting laid thing. It just wasn't going to happen. I was swamped, buried under books and photocopies, my eyes burning and aching from staring at my laptop seemingly 24/7.

Finally, one night after midnight, when I had to read the same sentence three times to comprehend it, I had to declare a momentary defeat. I snapped my laptop shut and headed into the bedroom, falling across my bed without bothering to change out of my sweats and t-shirt.

Then I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. Every inch of my body was telling me so. But I just couldn't get my brain to shut down and be quiet. I needed something to wipe me out, obliterate all thoughts of armadas, frigates and battle strategies so that I could sleep.

_I could jack off._

Now, where the hell did that thought come from? I did it, sure, but not all that often and almost always in the shower in the mornings where it was easy to clean up. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten myself off in bed like some teenager. I probably _was_ a teenager the last time I did it.

Of course, now that I'd thought about it, I couldn't _stop_ thinking about it and I was already half-hard in anticipation. I sighed in defeat and slid my hand down my stomach to get on with things. By the time my hand closed over my cock I was all the way hard. This wouldn't take long, I thought ruefully.

But after several minutes of stroking, I wasn't getting there. What the hell? Was it broken or something? First that completely out-of-line reaction to Little Napoleon in the conference room last month and now I couldn't manage to get myself off? And that's what did it. One flash of Little Napoleon in my head had me arching up off the bed with desire and my hand fisting hard around myself.

No, I couldn't do this. I couldn't rub one out while I fantasized about her. That was just..._wrong_. I'd never be able to look at her the same way again. Except that apparently, imagining her was the only thing that was going to get me there tonight. So I gave in. I let the images flood my mind. The whole twisted conference room fantasy along with a lot more perverted shit that I hadn't gotten around to imagining that day. And once I gave in, it felt _good_. I fully indulged myself; I feasted on mental images of her- of Bella Swan. I pictured her naked, I pictured her under me, on top of me, I pictured every square inch of her admittedly perfect little body being plundered by my hands and my mouth.

_Now_ I was getting there. In fact, it felt so good that I didn't want it to end too soon. So I slowed down just so I could imagine Swan a little bit more in conjunction with this. I imagined it was her hand, I imagined it was _her_, hot and tight around me….and then I was done. I came, long and hard, and as I moaned out my release, I moaned something else as well…_"Bella"._

I was so fucked.

*0*0*

I was right. It was weird seeing her after I'd whacked off to fantasies about her. She was oblivious, of course, but I felt like a dirty pervert. Not that it kept me from doing it again. Because now that my brain had a hit of luscious Bella Swan fantasies, it wanted more. I had them all the time. The Bella Swan fantasies were becoming like heroin and I was officially a junkie.

It meant that I was hyper-aware of her presence. If Little Napoleon entered a room, I seemed to know it instinctively. It was like I could smell her or something. I found myself watching her all the time and the physical attraction I'd always felt was starting to get out of hand, becoming a whole lot like raging lust and maybe low-grade obsession.

Except that we still hated each other. That hadn't changed at all. We still fought constantly, although every dust-up usually ended with me hard as a rock and desperate for relief. The situation was becoming completely unmanageable.

That's exactly what I was thinking about one night at the library as I tried in vain to research. I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for in the stacks; I just knew I'd know it when I found it. Attempting to do this kind of open-ended hunting when I was already so distracted was a recipe for failure. I couldn't even settle on which books to drag back to my carrel for further exploration. I had a ton of them spread out on one of the long tables scattered at random intervals through the stacks, as I checked and browsed and tried to make sense of the information.

Then I heard _her_ voice and I knew whatever meager headway I'd been making would be shot to shit for the rest of the night. It wasn't enough to make me leave, though. Junkie…heroin…yeah, I was screwed.

She rounded the corner into the little open area where I sat with my books, one arm around Angela's shoulders. Angela was distraught, carrying a huge stack of books, talking a mile a minute. It was very out-of-character for her.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

Swan's head snapped to me. "Oh, Cullen," she said, shortly. "Angela and I just need to sort something out."

I shrugged and turned back to my books, looking at them, but not paying attention to the words on the page.

"Okay, Angie," Swan said, her voice full of that brusque, business-like tone I knew so well. Here she goes, about to storm the castle, as usual. I pitied poor Angela. Swan was clearly about to take her apart about something. "Show me what's got you so freaked."

"Here, it's this," Angela said, flipping through the top book on her stack until she found the passage she was looking for. "Read that! If what he's saying there is true, it blows my paper entirely out of the water. I can't possibly start from scratch now. It's due in ten days!"

Swan was silent for a minute as she read. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she scowled at the page. Then she abruptly flipped to the back, her finger skimming down a page. "Alright, here's what we're going to do. We're going to check out his primary sources. They're in the references. He's just some guy writing a book. Five years ago this guy was just another grad student like us. And you know, _anyone_ can write a book." I could hear the sneer directed at me with that part. "These are just _his _assertions, Ang. It doesn't necessarily make it so. We need to go read the source material and see for ourselves."

"But…" Angela blinked and stammered. "That will take hours. Maybe days if I can't find them all here."

"It won't take that long if there are two of us. Now, let's get going. I know for a fact that at least four of these are on the shelves here. We'll start there."

Swan pulled Angela up out of her chair and pushed her down one of the aisles ahead of her, barking orders the whole time. I just stared after them as they left.

Swan had the same paper due in ten days. She was buried in her research, the same as Angela, the same as me. And she just dropped everything to go help Angela with her research. That didn't fit at all with what I knew about Little Napoleon. Little Napoleon was a mean, shrill tyrant. She knew what she wanted and she went after it with ruthless zeal. I'd always sort of admired her tenacity and seemingly endless energy. It was just a shame that she never used her considerable powers for good instead of evil. She was not a person who would drop everything and put herself in a very serious bind to selflessly help a friend in trouble. But wasn't that what she just did?

Maybe I was wrong about her. Just because she hated me didn't mean she hated everyone. Maybe she saved all the mean and nasty just for me. That was a sobering thought. And depressing. Because now I think I actually had a thing for her. For Little Napoleon.

I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear my thoughts. I needed to stop calling her Little Napoleon, even in my head, seeing as how I now had…_feelings _for her. Feelings for a girl who hated my guts. Fuck my life.

*0*0*

Over the next several weeks, I watched her. I'd _been_ watching her, of course. Watching her legs that one day when she wore a skirt; watching the curve of her neck when she sat in front of me in our Nineteenth Century European Politics seminar as she pulled her hair up to the top of her head and speared it with her pen; watching her chest whenever she wore a clingy t-shirt. Yeah, I'd been watching all of that. But now I actually watched her interacting with other people. In the past, I'd always tried to block out her voice; now I strained to hear every word she said.

Here's what I found out: yes, she was a fierce, driven little badger. But she was also kind, in her brusque way. She was loyal to her friends, few as they were. She looked out for the people she cared about. I even eavesdropped on her one day when she was in the conference room talking to her father on her cell. Yes, I'd turned into an obsessed stalker, but whatever. It was worth it to hear her on the phone with him. She was entirely different, soft, funny, and caring. She fussed over him; whether he was eating right, or working too much. He must have made a joke because she laughed. Swan _laughed_. And I fell. Hard.

Then I had a problem. Because she still hated me. She might smile and chat casually with Angela at the reference desk, but the second I walked past, she'd look at me and her whole face would transform. Her eyes would flash and she'd scowl. Then she would invariably insult me. I wanted her to talk to me the way she talked to her dad. I wanted that soft, smiling girl to smile softly at me. I had no idea how to make that happen.

To start, I tried just being less mean, but she just saw that as a sign of weakness and attacked me harder. It was clear that I was going to have to change up this game and get her to interact with me in an entirely new way, one that didn't involve fighting and insults.

We'd started our third year by then. Summer meant little to us, since we all stayed in Seattle and worked through it. I took a couple of seminars and caught up on my reading. Swan apparently spent the whole thing prepping her dissertation subject because by the end of the first week of classes, she was already completely buried in it. This made my task even harder, because she rarely ventured out of her carrel, which cut into my chances to interact with her.

Luckily, when she did infrequently emerge from her carrel, it was to find me right next door in mine. Well, I suppose luck didn't have much to do with it. My original assignment was a carrel on the second floor near the front. As I stood there in the office, skimming the notification letter that had been in my box, I took advantage of Shelley's phone call to skim the assignment list on her desk and see where Swan had been assigned. The fourth floor, in the back. That wouldn't do. I'd never have a good reason to just casually pass by if she was all the way back there.

I complained about the second floor ones being too close to the bathrooms and really noisy. Shelley apologized, but said there were no free carrels left to move me to. I smiled my friendliest smile at her and asked if I could take a look at the list. She got all flustered and she blushed and let me. I perused the list. Freaking Eric Yorkie had the carrel next to Swan. No, no,_ no_. No way was _Yorkie_ going to get to be next door to her all year. So I made up some bullshit story about Yorkie having a weak bladder and wouldn't it be more convenient for _him_ to take the carrel by the bathrooms? I acted like it was a huge hardship to take the lonely carrel at the back of the fourth floor and Shelley tsked sympathetically and patted my arm.

When I left the office, I had the key to my new fourth floor carrel. And with any luck, the key to a whole lot more.

But having the carrel next to Swan's didn't do me much good when her door was always shut tight and she never ventured out. No, I needed a way in there.

And then I thought of one.

In retrospect, lying to her might have been a low blow. But I rationalized that the lie wasn't very big in the scheme of things, compared to what was at stake. Just as I'd expected, Swan was absolutely furious when I told her that I'd changed my dissertation subject. She raged, she fumed, she smoldered, she looked like she wanted to throw stuff at me. It was hot.

I suppose if I'm confessing morally dubious things I did to get the girl, I should confess to one other thing, aside from lying to her about my dissertation subject. Oh, and sweet-talking Shelley into moving my carrel.

I broke into her laptop and read her dissertation proposal.

Honestly though, can you really call it "breaking in" when she left her laptop in the conference room for over an hour while she taught her class? And there was absolutely no password needed. Anybody could have come along and read it. So I did. Look at it this way: it would only truly be wrong if I was looking to gain from it, to steal her idea for my own or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just needed to know what she would be researching so that I could get there first and check out her books. Simple.

I did happen to notice that her dissertation proposal was good. Kind of brilliant, actually. The sort of sexy history that actually sells in the non-fiction section. I decided that if I ever could actually make this thing happen with her, I'd encourage her to shop it around to publishers after we graduated. That would make up for the laptop breaking and entering, right?

All my subterfuge seemed to start paying off right away. On the very first day after I enacted my plan, she voluntarily entered my carrel. Granted, it was just to yell at me and demand her book back, but I counted it as progress. And because I was conveniently located next door to her, I was there to see that she'd fallen asleep at her desk after midnight that night.

Seeing Swan…_Bella_…asleep, vulnerable, no armor in place, no vitriol spewing at me, kind of did a number on me. It made me imagine her all soft and sleepy like that in bed with me, that tangled dark hair spilling across my chest….yeah, I had to make this work. Of course, once she was fully awake, the snarling little badger was back, but I still managed to wrangle her into my car and I found out where she lived. Not that I'd do anything with that information. Not yet, anyway.

I almost blew it that night when I walked her to her door. She was busy throwing insults over her shoulder at me, I was busy thinking how fantastic it would be to spin her around, pin her to her door and kiss the hell out of her. So when she finally did turn around to face me, I sort of lost my train of thought. Before I knew what I was doing, I was touching her, brushing her hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. And there was definitely a moment there, a moment when all I could think about was leaning in to kiss her and I was pretty sure she was thinking about kissing me, too. Or at the very least, she sensed what was in the air between us.

But I knew what would happen if I did that. She'd call me a man-whore and a pig. Hell, she might even hit me. And then I'd be even worse off than when I started. So even though I wanted to grab her by the back of the head and just do it, instead I backed off and went home. She looked flustered and confused, which was a vast improvement over mean and nasty, so I figured mission accomplished.

The next few weeks were alternately exhilarating and frustrating. Exhilarating because my plan was working; Bella was talking to me, and not just screaming. Frustrating, because spending that much time together researching, talking, even occasionally arguing, was sending me absolutely around the bend for her. All the traits about her that used to drive me crazy still did, but in a whole new way. She constantly amazed me with her intelligence and insights, even when we disagreed. And her passion and dedication to her work blew me away. I realized that she was pretty much what I'd always been looking for in a woman, I just needed to stop shouting at her long enough to realize it.

*0*0*

I never planned on _that_ night being _the_ night. Yes, I'd made progress with Bella, but in my head I imagined a longer, more traditional route to couple-hood. I figured one night, if the conversation and researching had gone well and she wasn't too hostile, that I'd casually ask her if she wanted to go grab a coffee or something. Then, once we were outside our normal academic setting, maybe we'd finally have a normal conversation, without a single mention of battlefields or dates of engagement or armed combatants. Just a guy and a girl having coffee. Then, with the ice broken, I'd get her to go grab dinner one night. All slow and easy, and I'd have her dating me before she even knew what happened. I had a plan.

Then I ran into her in the stacks unexpectedly. Well, she ran into me. _Right _into me. Which gave me a split-second to notice again how petite and perfect she was. Yeah, I was pretty much instantly aroused, but I was getting used to being that way in Bella's presence. Then she snarled at me and that kept me from embarrassing myself.

But when she spun around, stretching for a book over her head, just out of her reach, I could no longer control my reaction to her.

I took one step forward, until I was almost flush against her back. I could feel the heat of her skin. I could smell her shampoo. I'd never been so close to her before, and I _really _liked it. I could feel how perfectly she'd fit up against me. I heard her draw in her breath sharply and I smiled a little. I reached up for her book, but slowly, so I could prolong this moment. Finally, I lowered the book enough to let her hand close around it easily. She turned. I still didn't move. There were just a few inches between us.

"Thanks, Cullen," she murmured. I really wanted her to start calling me by my first name. Preferably, I'd like to hear her scream it.

"No problem," I returned. But I still didn't move.

Bella looked up at me and there was definitely a moment. Her lips parted slightly. Her eyelids drooped a little. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. I wanted to push her back against the shelves and do deplorable things to her. In fact, that was something of a recurrent fantasy of mine. And suddenly, seeing the look on her face, for the first time I was pretty sure something similar was crossing her mind, too. I was seconds away from acting on it, from reaching out, grabbing her, and just _kissing_ her already, when she abruptly cut her eyes away and looked down, exhaling through her mouth.

I took a deep breath and backed up. She pushed past me and stalked off down the aisle. I banged my forehead against the bookshelf, wondering just how long I could hold out until I pounced on her.

I got my answer less than an hour later.

I'd just managed to get my head back into my work, bent over my laptop in my carrel, when she flew through the door with a huff. She must have just discovered that I'd scooped up the Mont St Jean escarpment book. This should be fun.

"What the fuck, Cullen?" she shouted.

I leaned back in my chair, barely able to keep the satisfied smile off my face. Her hands were on her hips, her eyes were flashing, and she was breathing hard. Damn, I loved her like this.

"Can I help you with something, Swan?"

"Mont St Jean! Hand it over!"

"What?" The book was right on the edge of my desk, waiting for her, but I wanted to drag out this little interaction for as long as possible, so I pretended that I had no idea what she was talking about.

"You know what I'm talking about. The topography of the Mont St Jean escarpment. Why do you even have it? You're doing naval blockades in France and Mont St Jean is where the Battle of Waterloo was..."

Okay, she was starting to spout historical facts at me that a toddler would know, so it was time to head this conversation off at the pass before we ended up in a big, ugly fight that would get me nowhere. I stood up, figuring that if my physical nearness had flustered her earlier, it might work again.

"I _know _where the Battle of Waterloo was fought, Swan. There's a theory that the river traffic…"

"Save it," she snapped. Then she sighed an exhale and raked a hand through her hair, still muttering, "I swear, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were pulling this shit just to get under my skin."

My heart started to pound as she unwittingly landed perilously close to the mark. Maybe this was it, the moment I was waiting for. I knew I'd unsettled her earlier. I saw the desire in her face, even if she tried to pretend it didn't happen. Fuck it. I'm going all in, I decided. I took a step closer to her and watched as confusion and alarm flashed through her eyes. And there was also something else. That same hazy look she had in the stacks.

"Is it working?" I asked her softly, still edging forward.

"What? You're doing it on purpose? You _are_ trying to fuck with me? Why would you do that?" She shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. Her words sounded like she was gearing up for a confrontation, but the rest of her was telling me anything but. She was uneasy, but instead of backing up, she held her ground. She stood still, allowing me to sidle closer, until I was invading her personal space, until I could feel the heat from her body on my skin. I knew it was causing all the synapses in my brain to fire at once and from her face, from her suddenly erratic breathing, I figured the same thing was happening to her, too. She wanted me, whether she was totally aware of it yet or not. I figured it was time to bring it to her attention.

"I'm asking you again," I said slowly, "Is it working? Am I getting under your skin?"

Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open and the electricity between us sang.

"Yes," she whispered, "You're getting under my skin."

I wanted to shout and fist-pump in triumph, but instead, I just smiled and said, "Well, that's good, then."

What she said next shocked the hell out of me and sent a lightning bolt of desire straight to my groin. The words seemed to tumble out of her mouth without her even being fully aware of them

"Do you want to be under my skin?"

And that was it. She broke me. All I could do was grind out my visceral response. "I want to be everywhere." Because that was absolutely true.

I took one more step forward to close the gap between us as I reached up and grabbed her face in my hands. She gasped in surprise, but she didn't even finish making the sound before my mouth was on hers, silencing her completely. It was like the world stopped for a long moment with her mouth under mine, my fingers on her face, her body so close to mine.

The first moments of the kiss pretty much obliterated all coherent thoughts, but once that passed, I worried that she wouldn't kiss me back, that she'd shove me off of her and start screaming. That didn't happen. She made a tiny sound in the back of her throat and shifted a little and then she was moving, her lips against mine, her hands sliding up my arms. I loosened my death-grip on her face so I could slide my fingers back into her hair and cradle her head. Then her lips opened under mine and I was in. Our tongues touched and we moaned in unison. My stomach clenched in desire.

And then it was for real; one hundred percent, completely mutual. Her hands were in my hair, her tongue was in my mouth, her body was pressing against mine. Except that she was still too short, so I put my arm around her waist and pulled her in and up. There. Oh, yeah. Everything aligned just right and I felt her sigh into my mouth. It kind of drove me crazy and before I knew it, I was kissing her jawline, her neck, sucking on her earlobe, tasting the little hollow behind her collarbone. Bella just threw her head back and let me, her fingers gripping my hair and holding my head against her like she'd never let me go. She had no worries. I did not _ever_ want to stop doing this.

I was lost in a fog of lust, my mouth on every patch of creamy bare skin I could reach, my fingers slipping up under the hem of her shirt to touch the skin of her back, when I felt her stiffen and heard her mumbled "Wait."

And here it comes. She's going to pretend that this _isn't _happening, that she _doesn't_ want this as much as I do.

"What's wrong?"

"We can't do this. This is…"

But there was no way I was letting her backtrack out of this. There was no denying what had been happening, how she'd been touching me just a second ago.

"Why not?" I murmured, right up against her ear, not letting her go in the slightest, continuing to touch her and stroke her everywhere I had been before.

She sighed before she said, "I don't do hook-ups like this."

Glad to hear that, although I never thought she did and this was not in any way a random hook-up. "Good. Neither do I."

"What?"

She sounded completely confused and I realized we were not as much on the same page as I thought. She still seemed to think tonight, right now, was some sort of lust-fueled aberration. No, I was going to have to go balls to the wall and put it all out there, confess everything. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Here goes nothing.

"Do you really not get it? What I've been doing here?"

I felt her little head shake and I exhaled heavily. Either this would be the start of our relationship or she'd absolutely kill me. Maybe both. Either way, I was about to find out.

"I'm still doing the British Navy in Spain for my dissertation."

"What? You lied about that?" Her voice got sharp and angry again, a sound I knew all too well.

"I fibbed a little, yes. I needed to get you to talk to me, _deal_ with me."

"Excuse me?"

She sounded affronted and outraged as she started to stiffen and push me back. But I wasn't ready to back down and let her go just yet. Bella wanted me, if she could just stop being angry at me long enough to realize it.

"Tell me something, Bella," I asked her, "If I asked you out a month ago, what would you have said?"

She scoffed dismissively. Yeah, there's the nasty little badger I know and love so well.

"Exactly. You'd have shut me down. All I did was check out a few books I knew you'd need. It got you into my carrel, and it got me into yours. And you talked to me."

"Are you saying you've wanted this…" she sounded completely flustered. Perfect.

"For a long time," I confessed, pulling her in tighter to me. She was silent, she just looked into my face, those big dark eyes fixed on mine. I stared back intently, willing her to understand just what I was feeling, how much I wanted her. Her hands worked the fabric of my shirt on my shoulders as I watched a million thoughts and emotions flit across her face. I'd never seen Bella so caught off-guard, so uneasy. But she also still wasn't shoving me away, so I took encouragement from that and let her work it through in her head.

Leave it to Swan to ask the one thing I wasn't expecting at all.

"What about all the girls?"

"What girls?" Because I really did have no idea what the hell she was talking about.

"The ones you're always with."

"Like Lauren?" That was all I could come up with. She did see that girl from my Intro to History class back here a few weeks ago. And afterwards, she'd accused me of sleeping with her. And later in the car, the man-whore accusation popped up again. The pieces began to slot into place. She thought I was trying to add her to my imaginary harem. I needed to shut down this line of thinking immediately. "I mean, yeah, I get that she's coming on to me, but I'm not interested. But she's always showing up, following me around, asking me questions about the class. And I _am_ her teacher. It's not like I can tell her to go away."

"But there were others…" she persisted, a little line forming between her eyebrows.

"Freshman girls with crushes on their teacher. I told you…not interested," I said as reassuringly as possible. Then I lowered my voice and leaned my face in a little closer for emphasis. Her eyes locked on my mouth, "There's only one girl I'm interested in, and I have been for quite a while now."

She still held perfectly still in my arms. I leaned in and kissed her gently. Her lips, her cheek, her jaw, her neck. She sighed, a breathy little moan that drove me crazy and her hands came up to my hair again. Yes…

"How long?" she whispered. Figures that she'd want a freaking timeline of my attraction. But if I was going to convince her I was serious, I was going to have to give her everything.

"Do you remember that argument we got into last year about the Trafalgar campaign?"

"Mmmm," she moaned as I nipped at the skin just under her ear. "I mean, _yes_, I remember. You were such a jackass about that."

"I wanted to rip your goddamned clothes off and take you on the conference table," I whispered, getting hard again just at the memory of that day.

My words seemed to have the same effect on her because then she was yanking my head up, crushing her mouth to mine, our tongues pushing against each other. It was frantic, intense, a little desperate and absolutely fantastic. My hands were everywhere on her; her ribcage, her hips, skimming over her ass and down to her thighs. Squeezing, stroking, pulling. I couldn't touch her enough. Without even thinking about it, I turned us so I could pin her against my desk, instinctively seeking out leverage in my assault on her body.

Bella helped out by hiking herself up on my desk and then things got really intense. Because now I was standing between her thighs, with her calves wrapped around my hips, and my raging hard on was pressed right up against the juncture of her thighs….and oh my God, how did we get here so fast? I couldn't stop to think about it, though, because we were still kissing and kissing and kissing, her fingers in my hair, on my neck, nails digging in. Considering that at the start of the night I thought we might still be weeks out from our first exploratory cup of coffee, the fact that we were making out on my desk, and Bella's legs were wrapped around me as we essentially dry-humped was enough to make me completely brain-dead.

"Do you know how many times I've thought about this?" I ground out against her lips.

"Thought about what?" she rasped.

"Having you like this, in my carrel, on my desk. Every damned night, knowing you were right on the other side of the damned wall…" I couldn't finish that thought because Bella rocked her hips into mine and I lost my words in a long hiss of pleasure.

"Cullen…" Bella whispered between kisses.

"Please don't call me that." I groaned as I moved once more to kiss her neck. I couldn't stand to hear her still keeping that distance between us. It made me fear that all of this might vanish when she came to her senses later. But no, there was no way she could deny what was happening here, the desire, the intensity. To make my point, I dug into her hips and held her still as I thrust my throbbing erection against her. Her head fell back and she moaned, long and low. And somewhere in that sexy sound I heard it: "Edward…"

"That's so much better," I muttered against her throat, trying to suppress my grin of triumph.

The next few minutes were just a haze of lust-fueled grinding and groping and before I knew it, my hands were on her breasts. So fast…it was happening so fast. Not that I was complaining in the least, but I needed to give her an out, to stop this if she didn't feel ready. I took a deep breath, trying to get a handle on myself.

"Do you want to slow this down?" I whispered.

"We probably should," she said, before she shoved her tongue in my mouth again.

"Yeah, probably," I murmured between kissing, licking, biting her lips.

"Oh, damn," Bella moaned.

"Yeah." I couldn't stop thrusting against her, not when, with each one, she gasped and thrust back.

"Take my shirt off," she said.

"Fuck."

I was lost then. Clothes came off and there was all of her skin, her pale, perfect skin. And then my mouth had to follow where my hands went and she was moaning and gripping my hair so tight as I teased her nipples with my tongue and teeth. She asked me if I had a condom, and I felt kind of like a dirt bag that I did, like it might reinforce all of her preconceived notions of me as a man-whore. So I gave her an out again. We didn't have to do this. There was plenty of time, even though I was so hard that I thought I might die if she wanted to stop. She called me on it though, and asked me straight-up if I was going to ignore this the next day.

I freaked. How could she think, after everything I'd done to get her, that I'd just walk away once I had her?

I practically shouted my response. "What? No!"

"Okay, then," she said with a sexy little smile, running her fingers back into my hair. God, that felt good. "We're going to do this, right? You and me? Together?"

I held her eyes with mine and tried to pour every ounce of sincerity I had in that look as I nodded. Yes, tomorrow. Yes, next week. Yes, next year, even. Because I had big, big plans for Bella Swan, even if she didn't know that yet.

She smiled, big and brilliant, before yanking my mouth back to hers and then we were there. The last of our clothes were dispatched and I was sliding into her, taking the woman I'd spent more hours fantasizing about than I cared to count. And it was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. Feeling her around me, holding on to me…for a moment, all I could do was close my eyes and breathe her in.

Then she moaned my name in my ear and the animal in me was unleashed. It was hard and hot and a little raw. My desk shook, stuff fell over, she clawed at my back, I think I bit her…but God, it was amazing. And the most amazing part was the sound she made as she threw her head back and came, holding on to me for dear life. And yeah, I was pretty much done then, too, groaning and exploding into her.

Almost immediately, as the sex-fog cleared in my head, I felt a little bad for how this had gone down. Never in a million years did I plan for our first time to be a hard-core fuck-fest on my desk in my carrel. Yes, I wanted to get there eventually, but I also wanted this girl to know I meant this, every bit of it. So I was gentle afterwards, kissing her softly, stroking her face, helping her get dressed. We decimated the H.M.S. Victory with our athletics, but it was a small price to pay. And besides, didn't I have my victory?

"I don't know about you." I said, hoping to segue us out of the library and back to my apartment and my bed. "But there is absolutely no way I'm going to read another word about the Spanish Armada tonight."

She laughed, "Yeah, I'm mentally fried, too."

I pulled her against me again so I could kiss her some more, "I hope the rest of you is still in good working order, because I really want to take you home and try that again someplace a little more conventional."

"That sounds like an excellent idea. But just so you know, tomorrow we're getting back to work and I'm taking back all my research books, you big, fat liar."

It figures that she'd schedule our sexcapades around our research. She'd probably present me with an Excel spreadsheet tomorrow, color coded and blocking out appropriate times for our relationship-based activities.

Then she smiled up at me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, which made my stomach flip like I was some dumb, lovesick kid. That's the only thing that could explain the stupidly sappy, romantic thing I said to her next. "You can have all your damned books. And while you're at it, you can have my body, my heart, and any other parts you'd care to take."

But the sappy stuff seemed to work for her because Bella's whole face softened. "I'll take all of it, thank you very much," she sighed.

"It's all yours, Bella. I surrender," I said sincerely. Because _that_ part I meant wholeheartedly. This battle was over and she won.

The war, however, I was going to call a draw.


	3. Fernando Part 1

**I had absolutely no plans to continue Waterloo, but during Fandom Gives Back: Breaking Dawn, duramater and JA Lover approached me and asked me if I would consider doing it if they made a contribution to Alex's Lemonade Stand. Who can say no to that?**

**Once I sat down to re-visit the story, I kind of got carried away and ended up writing more of a mini-fic than a one-shot, and it's rather ambitious in scale. There will be lengthy historical notes at the end, for any of you who are interested.**

**Because once upon a time, this was written as a one-shot based on an ABBA song, I've continued the theme with this. It's called Fernando. You'll soon see why. :)**

**Many thanks to arfalcon for beta'ing when all I asked her to do was pre-read. She'll eventually break me of my reliance on ellipses.**

**And of course, endless thanks to duramater and JA Lover for their generosity. This wouldn't exist without them.**

**Lastly, I don't own Twilight, Edward or Bella, but Fernando is all mine.**

*0*0*

*0*0*

"I got the strangest message on my cell today. Can you hand me those chopsticks?"

Edward passed me the chopsticks before retrieving his own from the plastic take-out sack. "Who from?"

"That's the thing… I don't know her."

"She didn't say?" he asked as he poured us both a glass of wine before leaning back against the front of the couch. I sat back on the rug and crossed my legs, shifting around to get comfy.

It was a nasty night out, spitting wet snow, but Edward had started a fire in his fireplace before I got there, so the little space on the rug in front of the hearth was warm and cozy. It was kind of annoying to me that while I was working practically full-time hours as a part-time adjunct at North Seattle Community College and earning a pittance for it, Edward was choosing to take another year to finish his dissertation just because he could. _And_ he could still afford this fantastic apartment in a beautiful old Victorian house, complete with a working fireplace. Of course, he could probably _buy_ this whole house, several times over. Then again, as long as he could afford it, I got to enjoy the fireplace, too, so I guess I couldn't be _that_ annoyed.

I took a sip of my wine. "She said her name was Kate Carter and she wanted to talk to me about an 'interesting opportunity,' whatever that means." I air-quoted the words.

Edward cleared his throat. "Oh… her."

I lowered my glass to look at him. "You know her?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of… how?"

"I sent her your dissertation proposal. That's what she's calling about. She works at Simon and Schuster."

The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. Tiny snowflakes hissed and melted on the leaded glass windows. A piece of tofu slid off of Edward's chopsticks. There was absolutely no other sound in the vacuum of silence the room had suddenly become.

"You did what?"

My words just hung there in the air. Edward blinked at me over the rim of his wine glass. He stopped short of taking a sip when he heard my tone.

"Um…." he said.

"You did _what_?"

"Um." he said.

"Edward! You'd better spit out more than 'Um!' What the hell did you do?" I pushed myself up onto my knees, my General Tso's Chicken forgotten on the coffee table. Edward leaned back slightly, quailing in the face of my wrath. Rightly so.

"I just, um, sent your dissertation proposal to a publisher I know."

"What…. I… why… I don't… just… _why did you do that_?"

I had my hands buried in my hair about to pull it out, when all I really wanted to do was pull Edward's hair out. Well, not really. I loved his hair. Even when the rest of him was being a jackass.

He took a deep breath and carefully set his wine glass on the coffee table, well out of the potential line of fire. It was such a nice night so far—Chinese takeout on the rug in front of Edward's fireplace while I graded papers and he worked on his thesis. Then he had to go and drop that bomb on me.

"Bee Girl…"

"Don't call me that!"

"You love it when I call you that." That was true. He'd started calling me that right after we got together. It was probably just the way he got himself to stop calling me Little Napoleon, which he didn't know I knew about, but I totally did. Still, the gesture was sweet. Bees were Napoleon Bonaparte's signature motif, hence Bee Girl.

"Not when I'm mad at you," I huffed.

"You're mad at me?"

"I haven't decided yet since you haven't actually explained yourself."

He exhaled and reached a hand out to wrap around my upper arm. I didn't shove him off, but I didn't get all weak-in-the-knees either, not even when he started doing the slow, seductive rub-his-thumb-in-little-circles thing. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Okay, I had the idea last fall."

"We weren't speaking last fall."

"Yes, we were. You were hurling a string of very creative insults at me on a regular basis."

I rolled my eyes. "Not what I mean. We weren't… you know…" I waved a hand awkwardly between us. Edward smirked and rubbed his thumb some more.

"What, Bella? We weren't _dating_? I wasn't your _boyfriend _yet?"

"You know I hate that word."

"Significant other."

I made a gagging noise.

"Main squeeze, monogamous sexual partner, boy toy…"

"They all suck."

"You know all you have to do is say the word and you can call me something else."

I shot him a look. He wasn't _about_ to bring up the "M" word in the middle of a fight. We'd danced around that whole 'lifetime commitment' conversation, but he knew I thought it was too soon. I wanted us both to be more established in our work first.

He held up a hand in defense. "Okay, we're not talking about that. Yet."

"Because we're supposed to be talking about something else. Like what you did."

He huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, but he started talking. "Last year."

I waved my hand in a circle, urging him to move past that part already.

"When I was stalk—trying to win you over."

"Yeah?"

"You know how I told you I changed my dissertation subject?"

"You mean when you lied to me and stole all my research materials?"

"Um, yeah." He looked down at his lap briefly and then back up at me. "So for that plan to work I kind of needed to know what you were going to need."

"Uh-huh."

"I, um, broke into your laptop and read your proposal."

I stared at him, not sure I was hearing him right. I opened my mouth and then closed it again when I couldn't figure out how to respond. Edward sensed his only opening and surged forward, grabbing my upper arms.

"I was just looking for information. I wanted to get close to you. I needed to figure out how to do it. I just read it so I'd know what books to take. That's all I did, I swear it."

I thought about it for a long time. So long that Edward started to squirm. In truth, it was almost… sweet. Sure the whole invading my privacy thing was pretty abysmal, but when I thought about him crushing on me like that, I couldn't lie to myself. It was pretty swoony.

"That's all?" I pressed, watching him squirm some more and liking it.

"Yes. Well–"

"Spit it out, Edward."

"I lied to Shelley in the office to get her to move me into Eric's carrel. The one next to yours."

I gasped. Well, I fake-gasped. Edward bought it, though.

"I just wanted to be closer to you. And look at how it turned out. Remember the fun we had in those carrels last year?" His hand ran up my thigh to my hip. That was playing dirty. He squeezed my hip and my mind started replaying all kinds of scenes from last year when we first started dating. Edward slipping into my carrel while I was reading, running his hands down my arms, kissing the back of my neck, pulling me up out of my chair and turning me around so he could kiss me.

I sighed.

"Okay, we're getting off topic," I said, sitting back on my heels and out of reach of his seductive grabby hands. "You lied to me."

"Only because I was out-of-my-mind crazy about you."

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't suppress my smile. Because who could resist a line like that? Edward Cullen made me weak in the most ridiculous ways.

"And you showed my dissertation proposal to that publisher without asking me."

"Because it's brilliant and the world should see it."

"You don't even believe it!"

"Doesn't matter," he shrugged. "You can write a good book just based on speculation. And it was the least I could do after invading your privacy so egregiously."

"Flatterer."

He smirked, and those crazy snake charmer eyes narrowed at me. He leaned forward, his hands braced on either side of my hips. "Truth-teller."

"Edward."

"Bella," he mimicked me. "Will you quit being stubborn about this? She called you, didn't she? That's because she agrees with me. It's brilliant. You deserve a wider readership than you'll get with a monograph stuffed on the shelf in University of Washington's library."

I paused, chewing on my lower lip. I still wanted to fight him on this. It was wrong of him to go to a publisher behind my back, especially since I suspected he used his Cullen name to grab their attention. On the other hand, refusing to pursue this would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face.

"What would I have to do?"

His smirk grew wider, because he knew he'd won. He leaned into me, pushing my knees apart to make room. I leaned back on my hands, but I wasn't actively trying to get away from him and he knew it.

"Call her back. See what she has to say. Be your usual, brilliant self."

He dipped his head and kissed my chest, just above the edge of my shirt. My breath caught in my throat. It was really shameful how easy I was when it came to him.

"What if I can't do it?" I whispered, giving voice to insecurities that no one in the world saw except him. He was the only person I trusted with my self-doubt. "What if I can't write what they want to see? I know the research is tantalizing, but what if I can't find the missing links?"

"Shh," he murmured, moving his face up until he could kiss the side of my neck, the underside of my jaw, the soft spot behind my earlobe. My eyes closed and my head tipped back. His hand curled around my thigh. My fingers slid into his hair. "You can do it. I was in school with you for three years and there's one thing I know and that's you can do anything. Besides, you forget: your boyfriend happens to kick ass at research."

"He does, huh?" Edward was crawling forward, pushing me back onto the rug. "My boyfriend sounds kind of cocky."

"Mmm," Edward shrugged, shifting his weight until he was laying on me, his hips between my thighs, his arm braced beside my head. "You never seem to complain."

He shifted his hips and I gasped. Yup, no complaining here. Edward's free hand slid up under my shirt, his fingers tickling the bare skin just below my bra, and I quit thinking, too. I think entirely too much.

"You can't always win fights with sex, you know," I sighed as I tipped my head back and let him work his way down my chest.

"I won it with pandering and flattery, too. Shut up and kiss me."

*0*0*

I pushed away from my desk and rubbed my hand across the cramping muscles in the back of my neck. My hair had escaped its knot, and as I twisted it back up and speared it with a pencil, I surveyed the mound of books and photocopies surrounding me.

Nothing. A week in Lisbon, digging through the National Archives from opening till closing and I had nothing to show for it.

It had to be here. I had this tantalizing piece of evidence—the Spanish sailor's journal—that talked about unidentified ships to the south at the Battle of Trafalgar. It made sense that they were Portuguese. Every instinct I had told me they were Portuguese. They just _had_ to be Portuguese. But a week of digging in Lisbon had turned up not one substantive piece of evidence to back up my theory.

Oh, but if it were true! If Portugal had a secret, pivotal role in the Battle of Trafalgar, it would change everything. Well, it would change everything in the rarified little academic circles Edward and I frequented. The rest of the world would go on spinning, completely unconcerned that Portugal turned out to be the unsung hero of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars. Honestly, where were the world's priorities?

I had the journal. It was pretty good all on its own. I managed to spin it into my entire dissertation, after all. But this: I needed a lot more than just the journal if I was going to write a whole book.

Kate, the publisher Edward sicced on me, was just as intrigued by the journal as I had been. The fact that it was someone's private thoughts, in their own hand, made it much more interesting to her than a bunch of facts in dusty old government documents. And if my hunch turned out to be right, if Portugal had been far more instrumental than history currently assumed, then there was the added allure of historical research overturning time-honored fact, which Kate said lent it a certain populist, _DaVinci Code_ appeal.

That was when Edward had to stop me from walking out of the meeting in disgust at the mention of that book. Kate went on to explain that my theory, if borne out and written about in less dry, academic language, had a rather wide-spread appeal to the casual armchair historian.

That was intriguing. Now I just had to prove it.

If those ships were there, someone had to order it. But who? I'd been over and over the official correspondence of Prince John VI, who was acting as regent at the time, and Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy and there wasn't so much as a hint of such actions taking place. I'd poured over every member of the Portuguese government, looking for someone, anyone, who would have been in a position to plan something like that. Nothing.

Oh, sure, there was the tired old conflict between Portugal's British alliance and its Franco-Spanish alliance. Everybody knew that story. What more was there to say about that? It had been done to death. But this? Portugal maneuvering behind the scenes to bring down the Napoleonic powerhouse? Sneak-fighting to avoid an alliance it abhorred? Now _there_ was a story.

If it was true. And it _had_ to be true.

I sighed and turned back to my photocopies wondering what Edward was up to at that moment. When I told him about this research trip, he jumped all over it. The way he painted it, we'd be spending two weeks lounging around in the Portuguese sun while I wrapped up my research. What it had been in reality was me spending every hour of daylight holed up in the concrete mausoleum that was the Portuguese National Archives. By the time I made my way back to our hotel every night, Edward was sunburned and bored and I was exhausted and cranky. Some romantic get-away.

I started to go back over my photocopies from the top, but I was just too tired to make sense of it. Besides, I knew the answer wasn't here. My gut told me so. Yeah, that same gut that insisted an answer existed in the first place. Whatever.

Glancing at my phone, I saw that it was four-thirty. Close enough to quitting time. Maybe Edward would have woken up from his freaking siesta by the time I got back to the hotel. I deserved a little break.

I fired off a text.

_Quitting early. Be back soon- B_

His response came ridiculously fast.

_Really? Hurry!- E_

It made me smile, and yes, hurry.

The Portuguese National Archives were housed in a dismal concrete block of a building that would have done Cold War Civil Defense planners proud. It was known by the locals as Torre de Tomba—The Tomb. The Archives were located on the rather sparse, unlovely campus of Lisbon University, and not exactly close to the much more scenic neighborhood that housed our hotel, the Alfama district. It was nearly six when I finally reached the Palacete Chafariz d'el Rei, where we were staying.

When we first climbed out of the cab a week ago, I planted my feet and nearly insisted on staying at the student hostel I'd researched instead. In fact, Edward had to take me out and get me drunk at dinner just to convince me to step foot in the stupidly luxurious room he'd reserved. And even then, it was more like staggering than stepping. But when I woke up the next morning, with my hung-over cheek pressed against 800 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and the glorious ocean breeze blowing through the French doors leading on to our private terrace, I decided that there were worse uses for Edward's scandalous wealth.

All week long, returning to our sumptuous hotel room had been the only part of this trip that felt remotely like a vacation. Well, that and the awesome sex we had every night. That was pretty good, too.

I looked around when I let myself in but didn't see Edward, although I could hear him moving around in the bathroom. Dropping my overstuffed backpack by the door, I toed off my shoes and face-planted on the bed. Oh, nice, nice bed. It always felt so good.

Moments later, I heard the click of the bathroom door.

"What kind of hotel offers service like this? I ordered a stunning woman to be delivered to my bed and she shows up _fully dressed_! I plan on issuing a strongly-worded letter."

"Mrpphhff," I said.

I felt the bed dip as he climbed over me, knees caging my hips, hands on either side of my ribcage.

"Hard day?" he asked softly, pressing his lips to my back right between my shoulder blades. Even through my shirt, I felt it, and it made me groan.

I turned my face to the side so I could talk to him instead of the pillow. "You could say that."

"Hard day for me, too."

I chuckled. "I feel that, and I think your hard day and mine are two different things."

Edward shifted, his hard on rubbing against my ass as he ran his lips up the back of my neck. "Mmm, but my hard day is much more fun."

I sighed. "Today I wouldn't argue with you."

He slid one hand up under the hem of my shirt, his fingertips tracing my ribs. "Maybe you can help me out with my hard day and then I can help you with yours."

"What about dinner?"

"It's six o'clock. That's like three hours too early for dinner in Lisbon. We have lots of time to work on my hard day."

I wiggled a little to get purchase on the bed and then twisted until I was flat on my back, still underneath him.

"I guess I could see what I can do about your problem." I hooked two fingers into the waistband of his shorts, the coarse hairs on his abdomen tickling the back of my hand. I pushed in a little and my fingertips brushed his head. He hissed and closed his eyes.

"A little help would be good."

"You know I like to be helpful." I pushed up to kiss the underside of his jaw, my favorite secret spot. He was a little bit ticklish there.

"God, you're such a good Samaritan," he groaned, thrusting his hips when my hand wrapped around him.

"I'm like freaking Mother Theresa."

"You're a fucking saint. Now take off your pants, please."

*0*0*

An hour later, after we'd dealt thoroughly with Edward's hard day, we lay naked across the bed, the sheet twisted around us. My head was on his chest and he was wrapping my hair around the fingers of one hand. The sun was setting and the sheer white curtains on the open French doors blew in the gentle, warm breeze. In short, I was wallowing in perfection.

"Okay, your turn," Edward said. "Let's deal with your hard day."

I chuckled and kissed his chest. "I'm pretty sure we did. Twice."

"Wait. I thought it was three."

I shrugged one shoulder. "Two was more like a continuation of One."

"So Three was actually only Two?" He sounded so deflated.

I pushed up on my elbow to look at him, all rumpled and flushed and recently-sexed. Jesus, I loved him. "No, Three was _spectacular_."

He flashed me his blinding grin. "Alright. That's better. Now, talk to me about today. Seriously."

I groaned and flopped back down. "Seriously, I've been staring at a brick wall all week. I've looked at every scrap of official correspondence. Every line entered in every register. Every diplomatic missive, every court document. Everything. There's not a hint of this anywhere. Not an order, not even a discussion of it. It's just not there."

"Hmmm. Well…."

"Spit it out. You can't hurt my feelings. I already know I'm a failure."

"You're not a failure, Bella. I just think you're looking in the wrong place."

"Where else is there to look? I told you, I've already gone over everything in the National Archives and—"

"What you're looking for won't exist in the Archives. Or anyplace else official."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we're talking about Prince John VI subverting the Franco-Spanish domination of the Iberian Peninsula. Why would he do that?"

I sighed, because Edward knew the answer to this as well as I did. A _toddler_ would know it. Well, a toddler well-versed in the Napoleonic Wars, anyway. "Well, _duh_…because he was trying to honor the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373, of course."

Edward widened his eyes at me, like I was missing the most obvious thing on the planet. "Think about that. It's 1805 and he's trying to honor an alliance formed in _1373_. That's not a political maneuver. That's a matter of honor."

I considered that for a moment. "So? What does that matter?"

"To Prince John, it clearly mattered a lot. When conventional political wisdom, hell, even his Prime Minister, favored an alliance with France, he tried to hold on to this ancient promise. If he's going to act in defense of it, he's not going to do it through official channels. He's going to find someone who would understand his sense of honor and obligation. A nobleman. A personal ally, not a political one."

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "Oh, my God. I've been looking in all the wrong places."

I scrambled out of the bed and raced across the room to my backpack.

Edward pushed up on his elbows. "While I'm not going to complain about the sight of you running around our room completely naked, I'm wondering what the rush is? I thought we were going to dinner."

Dropping unceremoniously to the floor, I flipped through my photocopies, looking for the document I could only barely remember. I prayed I'd brought a copy home. "I thought I remembered something."

"Clothes?"

I threw him a scowl before turning back to my papers. "A-ha! This is it."

Scanning my finger down the list of names, I looked for the one I remembered.

"Edward, you're a genius."

"Well, yes, I knew this. Care to tell me how my genius has manifested itself this time?"

I rushed back into bed and spread my photocopies across the sheets to show him. "Look at this guy. Dom Fernando Amaral. Prince John's best friend. Part of the royal court, but no political appointment. Occasionally Prince John had him perform minor diplomatic services in England, just ceremonial stuff, but that's all. Nothing official."

Edward scanned the page, eyebrows furrowed. "Amaral?"

"There wasn't much on him in the National Archives, but there wouldn't be, would there? He wasn't an official part of the government. I'll have to try to track him down through other archives. I'll start at the National Library tomorrow and see if I can turn anything up. Jesus, I've wasted a week. I hope I find something fast."

Edward kissed my knee. "You will, because nobody kills the research like you. But if you're storming the library tomorrow, that means you need to eat tonight. Now, you. Bathroom. Clothes. Dinner."

*0*0*

Fernando Amaral's family tree was giving me a headache.

The Bibleoteca Nacional had almost nothing on the man. He showed up in a few contemporary accounts of the court of John VI, but since he'd had no official government function, there was little mention of him outside of "close friend and advisor to the prince." I'd have to track down his personal correspondence, if it still existed. He was from a noble family, so the odds were good that it did. Letters and journals of nobility tended to stay tucked away in family attics and libraries. But where?

The man had never married, so I was reduced to tracking down his extended family tree, trying to puzzle out the most likely place to start hunting for documents.

My phone buzzed in my pocket with a text.

_Where are you?- E_

I scowled. This was hardly a mystery. Edward knew exactly where I was headed this morning. Why would he ask for confirmation of that?

_The National Library, like I told you this morning- B_

_Where in the library? Main reading room? Study carrel?- E_

I looked up at the main entrance to the reading room and spotted Edward, phone in hand, scanning the room for me. He saw me and smiled, winding around the desks as he moved towards me.

"Hey," I whispered when he got close. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I came to rescue you from the tyranny of the stacks."

I groaned. "I'd love to, Edward, but I have less than a week left here. I can't goof off. I have to work today."

"Of course you're going to work. Just not here." He slid a piece of paper across the desk towards me. There was a woman's name and number on it.

"What's this?"

"Maria Renata Amaral. She's the last direct descendant of Fernando Amaral and she still owns the family estate in Ribafria. That's her phone number."

"How did you get this?"

"When you said Amaral, it rang a bell. There's an Amaral on the board of Cullen, Inc."

I shoved the paper back across the table at him. "No. No way, Edward. You are not pulling your Mr. Moneybags stunts to buy me access to archives."

Edward reached out and clamped a hand down over my wrist. "Relax, Bella. That's not what I did. Yes, the name sounded familiar, so I called my brother. And yes, Ricardo Amaral is a part of the family, but the Brazilian branch. All he did was point me in the right direction and give me a name. He doesn't even know her personally. I googled her phone number. You could have done it just as easily. You still have to call her up and talk your way into the family archives."

"Still."

"Bella, you're going to have to get used to my money. And the fact that I know people. If you'd met Ricardo Amaral yourself at a cocktail party, would you hesitate to ask him about this?"

"No, of course not."

"It's no different. I made use of a contact. Nothing more, nothing less."

I sat back and considered that. I had so much genealogical research in front of me that it could easily take me the rest of the week to find the name that Edward had just placed in front of me. If I ever found it. I'd be stupid to get belligerent over this. At least, that's what I told myself as I scrambled out of my seat so I could run outside and call her.

*0*0*

The phone rang four times. I paced back and forth on the wide steps of the library, squinting in the hot Portuguese sun. When I was about to give up, someone picked up.

"Hello?"

"Senhora Amaral?"

There was a pause and then, "Yes?"

I closed my eyes and cleared my throat, willing myself to be smooth and persuasive. I'd never been particularly good at this charm thing. That was Edward's specialty. I'm sure if he were in my place, Maria Amaral would be handing over the family archives in a matter of minutes. But this was my story and it was on me to win her over. I told myself to keep Little Napoleon on a leash and be nice.

"My name is Isabella Swan," I said, in my halting, awkward Portuguese.

"I speak English," she interrupted me. Her accent was heavy, but her English was perfect.

"Thank you so much," I said in English. "I'm Isabella Swan. I'm a historian and a Professor of History at North Seattle Community College in Washington." Professor of History was a bit of a stretch, but I did teach college classes and get paid for it, so I was using it.

There was a tiny pause on the line. "How may I help you, Miss Swan?"

"I'm in Lisbon researching your ancestor, Dom Fernando Amaral, and I'm hoping you might be able to help me out."

Another pause, and I swallowed hard. "You're researching Dom Fernando? Whatever for?"

I took a deep breath. She was curious, that was a good thing. "I'm pursuing a lead that points to his involvement in some sensitive communications between Portugal and England during the Napoleonic War."

"This family has never been involved in politics," she protested.

"But they were close advisors to the Royal family for decades."

"Centuries," she corrected me with a note of pride in her voice. "The Amaral family was always amongst the most trusted supporters of the Royal family."

"Exactly," I said. "And what I'm talking about would have been far too sensitive to be handled by anyone other than someone Prince John trusted implicitly. Someone like Dom Fernando."

"And you think there may be proof of this involvement?"

I thought quickly, deciding to play my next hand a little bolder. Time to challenge her familial pride and see if she rose to the bait. "That depends on whether or not your family thought his personal papers would have been worth keeping."

"Of course we do. The Amaral family has a long and noble history, one we hold dear. We treasure everything in our family archive."

"That's great to hear. Some families just throw things away."

She sniffed. "Not ours. There may no longer be a Portuguese monarchy, but our family values its royal connections nonetheless. I'm pleased someone else finally seems to as well."

I flushed with relief. Almost there. "Do you think it would be possible to look through your family archives?"

She thought for a minute and I fisted my hand so tight that my nails were cutting into my palm.

"The family estate is not in Lisbon, I'm afraid."

I let out all the air I'd been holding in my lungs. "That's okay. I'm happy to travel to wherever you are. Whatever is convenient for you."

"Belgrano is in Ribafria. I don't believe there's a direct train," she said. I couldn't figure out what she was talking about for a second until it hit me that she meant the house. The house had a name. They were people that had houses with names.

"We can drive."

"We?"

"I'm here with a friend. Another historian."

She paused again and I held my breath again. "Come tomorrow, why don't you? We can have lunch and you can look at the papers in the afternoon."

I wanted to scream and jump up and down. Instead, like the calm, cool, professional historian I was, I thanked her profusely and scribbled her address on the back of my hand.


	4. Fernando Part 2

"Oh, my God, Edward, look at this place," I muttered, climbing out of the rental car the next day. Belgrano turned out to be not just the name of the house, but of the _estate_. Ribafria was only an hour outside of Lisbon, but it felt like another world. Or maybe it was just Belgrano that was another world. It was outside of Ribafria itself, and set back off a small country road. High box hedges separated the estate from the road, with an old black wrought-iron fence opening onto a curving lane. The drive led through the lush green, slightly overgrown grounds as we drove up to the main house. Passing through the grounds, past gardens, sculptures and run-down out buildings felt like stepping back in time.

The house was three stories, built out of speckled, mossy grey stone. It wasn't particularly ostentatious, but it oozed Old World eminence. Once upon a time, people with money and power lived here. Generations of them. A lot of the money and power seemed to have fled, since the stone fountain in front of the house was dry and the hedges needed a good trimming back, but it was hardly a ruin. Shabby gentility summed it up nicely.

Edward crossed around the front of the car and squeezed my hand before we walked up the path to the front door.

"I'm terrified," I murmured.

"Why?"

"I suck at the whole 'charming and polite' thing. That's your ballgame."

Edward scoffed. "I beg to differ. You can be plenty charming when you put your mind to it."

"I'm not talking about when I'm naked, Edward. That doesn't count."

"Hey, you can do this."

I nodded. "If you say so."

"I do. Just stay focused, okay?"

I took a deep breath and raised my hand to the big brass knocker on the door, because of course, there wasn't a normal doorbell.

A large dog started barking from inside and I could hear footsteps and a woman's voice reprimanding the dog in Portuguese. Moments later the door opened and an older woman smiled at us. She was maybe in her early seventies, casual, but still elegant in a long cardigan sweater and loose pants, her shoulder-length silver hair swept off her lined, still-beautiful face.

"Miss Swan?" she said in her lovely, Portuguese-accented English.

"Yes, and you're Senhora Amaral?"

"Actually I'm Senhora Taveira. Amaral was my maiden name."

"Oh! I'm so sorry. I had no idea." I cringed inside. I'd already made all kinds of social blunders and I wasn't even in the door yet. This was why I sucked at this stuff.

She waved a hand dismissively. "I didn't correct you. I'm still an Amaral, after all. Welcome to Belgrano. Please come in."

We moved into the cool tiled entryway. "This is Edward Cullen," I said. Edward's hand shot out and his face lit up with a smile.

"A pleasure to meet you, Senhora Taveira."

His wicked smile seemed to work on her as well as it worked on most things with two X chromosomes and she smiled warmly back at him. "Please, call me Maria."

I suppressed an eyeroll. She didn't tell _me_ to call her Maria. He really was shameless. And hot.

A second later we were accosted by the largest black dog I'd ever seen. It was bigger than a Shetland pony, and it was dripping slobber on my shoes, but its massive tail was wagging wildly, so I wasn't afraid. Like Maria, the dog took an instant liking to Edward. Must have been a girl. The dog rubbed her massive body along his legs and turned her huge head up to gaze adoringly at him.

"Oh, Sofia!" Maria scowled, pulling the dog back by her collar. "Such a terrible pest. My son got her for me. The housekeeper is here during the day, but since my husband passed away, it's just me at night. Go, Sofia, find Beatriz in the kitchen and leave the guests alone."

She shooed the dog out of the room and turned back to us.

"Thank you so much for seeing us today," I said.

"My pleasure. It's nice to see someone from the outside taking an interest in the family. There was a time when we were quite prominent. But now…" she waved a hand gently. "There are just a few of us left from the family. Once there were houses all over the country, but now there's only this one, and a small one at that. The grand family estates are all gone."

If Maria considered this a modest little left-over, I couldn't even imagine what the grand family estates had looked like.

"It's lovely," Edward said. "Would you tell us a little about it?"

That was the right question to ask. Maria lit up like a candle and started talking, leading us from room to room on the ground floor. She told us about the Amaral ancestor that built the estate and the ones who expanded it and designed the gardens. She pointed out which pieces of furniture were gifts from which King or Queen of Portugal. She told us which famed artist was commissioned for which Amaral portrait.

She stopped in a long hallway and pointed at one. "This is him. Dom Fernando Amaral."

I stepped closer and peered up at it. For a guy in a frilly frock coat and a white wig, he was kind of good-looking. Pretty hot, actually. Good bone structure, nice nose, very pretty mouth. His eyes were riveting. They were dark, but in a way, they reminded me of Edward's. I remember back before we were even dating, I used to avoid making eye contact with him because of the effect it used to have on me. I told myself it was because I hated him so much, but in reality, I was afraid that once I looked, I wouldn't be able to look away. I could imagine that Dom Fernando would have had the same effect on women.

I felt Edward shift into my side so he could whisper in my ear. "Are you crushing on your research subject?"

"Maybe a little. He's hot."

"Oh, great. I'm in competition with someone who's been dead for two hundred years."

I looked at him over my shoulder, squinting my eyes in consideration. "Hmmm, your hair is better."

He chuckled and reached up to touch it, like I knew he would, and I turned to follow Maria down the hall.

"Lunch is almost ready," she said, smiling back at me over her shoulder. "It's such a nice day, I thought we could eat on the back terrace, if that's alright with you."

"It sounds perfect."

And it was perfect. The old stone terrace overlooked the rolling green lawns of the grounds. There was a small lake in the middle distance and far off were the mountains. It was breathtaking. Beatriz, the housekeeper, appeared with Sofia the dog in tow, setting out cold salads and a bottle of chilled white wine.

Edward kept up a steady patter of questions about the house and the area, charming the pants off Maria. She was actually very nice. She might be descended from an ancient line of European nobility, but really, she was a sweet, older widow whose children lived far away, busy with their own families. She was left alone in this big old house with her memories and her family history and nobody but the housekeeper and Sofia, the dog to talk to. She seemed pleased to have our company, and even more pleased that we were actually interested in this forgotten noble family that meant so much to her.

"So," I interjected, before Edward could coo with her over any more pictures of her cherubic grandchildren. "I noticed in my research that Dom Fernando never married. That's kind of surprising, considering his social standing and wealth."

Maria nodded in agreement. "And you saw from his portrait that he was quite handsome. He was considered a bit of a rake in his day. Quite the eligible bachelor."

I nudged Edward under the table, thinking Fernando sounded an awful lot like him. He looked at me with wide, fake-innocent eyes.

"Is there any indication why?"

"It was a difficult time for the royal family and consequently, ours. When Portugal finally fell to France in 1807, the royal family fled to Brazil and our family went with them."

"Your family went into exile with Prince John?"

"Of course," Maria said with a sniff, as if to suggest they did otherwise was an insult. "Many of those closest to the Prince went to Brazil. Dom Fernando was his best friend. He never would have left John's side. Perhaps Fernando felt the needs of his friend and ruler outweighed his own personal wants. Fernando devoted his life in service to King John."

"That's very honorable," Edward said, and Maria smiled at him. I loved the way she talked about ancestors who'd died two hundred years ago as if they were cousins who lived just down the street.

"Well," Maria said, clapping her hands together. "Shall we see if Fernando left you any breadcrumbs to solve your mystery?"

I forced myself to get up from the table slowly, like a normal person, and smile politely, instead of slobbering like the history-obsessed maniac I knew I really was.

Maria showed us into the library, a lovely wood-paneled room with a painted, coffered ceiling. Three walls were lined with old leather-bound books that made my palms itch with desire. I glanced over at Edward and he was looking at those books with a face that I usually only saw when I was under him and naked. He wanted it bad. It only made me love him more, that he was willing to suppress his own avid interest so that I could get to see what I needed.

"The family papers are all boxed on these shelves," Maria said, pointing towards the far wall. The shelves were lined with old cardboard archival boxes I knew well from my time spent in libraries like this one. "I'm afraid there's no complete record of what's here. My great-aunt Carlota had an interest in the family history and she's the one responsible for moving everything out of the old trunks in the attic and into these boxes, but she didn't get much farther than that. I believe it's more or less in chronological order, but I can't help you more than that."

"That's okay," I told her, skimming my fingers over the boxes, noting Carlota's penciled-in dates on each one. "This is a great start." I sounded calm and professional, but inside I was about to weep with excitement. This was a completely unknown archive of documents. No one outside of Maria's great-aunt had even touched them since their owners penned them centuries before. I knew exactly what Lord Carnarvon must have felt the day he busted into Tutankhamen's tomb. I was about to reach back through time and touch history as it happened. My hands were shaking.

Edward moved up behind me, ostensibly to examine the boxes with me. Instead, he whispered in my ear, "Breathe, Bella."

I shook my head slightly. "Do you realize…" I trailed off, unable to finish, unable to find the words for the feelings.

"Yeah," he whispered roughly, just as overcome as me. "I do realize."

In a flash, I had an overwhelming compulsion to push him back on that beautiful mahogany table behind us and mount him. Crazy history obsessions. One whiff of old paper and I was wildly turned on. I heard him swallow thickly at my side and I glanced over at him. His jaw was so tense that the tendons of his neck were popped out. He shifted slightly as he tried to adjust himself without his hands. I smiled. Yeah, he wanted it, too.

It was a fun little fantasy, and maybe one we'd play around with when we were back at our hotel later, but right now there was no time to think about anything but these papers.

I took a deep breath and willed my shaking hands to be still. I pushed my elation and anxiety to the back of my head and forced the hard-nosed academic in me to get it in gear. There was work to do.

Carlota had labeled boxes to cover even ten year periods. In some cases there was more than one box for each decade. She broke that pattern at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first one was labeled "1800-1807". That made sense. The royal exile to Brazil would have been a defining moment in this family's history, very much a "before and after" event for them. It worked out well for me, since 1800-1807 was exactly the window I wanted to examine, and there were half a dozen boxes that covered that period. There was the possibility that pertinent correspondence existed earlier, but I figured I'd start as close to the events as possible and work outward as necessary.

Carefully, I slid the first box off the shelf.

"Why don't you use the main table?" Maria suggested, pointing to the mahogany one that had just recently starred in my raunchy library fantasy. "The light from the windows is good for reading there."

Right. Reading. Not sexing up your boyfriend, Bella.

I settled down at the table with Edward on my left and Maria across from me. Even though she'd lived alongside these documents all her life, she seemed genuinely interested in looking at them with us. Maybe if you weren't looking for something specific, like we were, then all they were was a bunch of old papers.

After I handed out cotton archival gloves to everyone, I opened the box and began to carefully shift through the contents. Letters. Stacks and stacks of them, all in Portuguese, which I was only passably proficient at. This would be tough. Plus, although the letters were grouped by year, they were penned by many different people and seemed to be about a wide variety of subjects. A cursory initial examination showed some to be personal letters and others dealing with family or estate business.

"Maybe I should sort them by recipient. That's probably the best way to start," I muttered.

"Here, hand me that stack," Edward said. I looked at him. "What?" he asked. "I'm here so I'm helping. Give me a stack to sort."

I smiled at him and pushed a pile in front of him.

"I'm happy to help, too," Maria chimed in. "It's quite fascinating, actually."

"If you're sure."

"Of course. Who knows what we might find!" She sounded so excited, and I realized that this was probably the biggest thing to happen at Belgrano in years. I happily handed her a stack of letters to sort.

Half an hour later, we had something of a system going. While there were letters to and from numerous members of the family, there were a few that made up the lion's share. And two of those were teenage girl cousins who seemed to exchange letters nearly daily. It was a pretty safe bet that those letters weren't hiding any grave diplomatic secrets. Another frequent correspondent was an uncle of Fernando's, but all of his letters were just from his land agent about estate management issues, so we could leave those out as well.

I was half way through the second box when I found the first letter to Fernando. Actually, it was both to and from Fernando. "Crossing" a page with additional writing was not uncommon in the period. Paper and postage were both costly, so often a letter-writer would write a full page, turn the paper sideways, and continue to write, the new lines perpendicular to the old. It looked a little chaotic when taken as a whole, but if you read it, it wasn't hard to let the crossing lines of text blend into the background. It was a way to get two pages of correspondence for the price of one.

But Dom Fernando certainly wouldn't have been concerned with paying for an extra page in a letter, so there had to be another reason he'd done it. Plus, the handwriting of the crossed lines was different. Two different people had written on the same letter. As soon as I'd read a few lines in each direction, I knew who the writers were and why they'd crossed lines.

"Oh, my God, look at this." I spread the page out on the table so Edward and Maria could both see it. "The first page of writing is by Fernando, and it's to Prince John. But look at this. John answered him back by writing across the same page. Why would he do that?"

Edward raised an eyebrow. "Because anything in Prince John's possession was essentially part of the government. If he sent it back to Fernando, Fernando could keep it private."

"This is it," I said. "This is why there's no official record. John made sure anything he wrote wouldn't make it into the royal archives and this is how he did it. He sent it all back to the sender."

"So what was he talking about with Fernando that was such a secret?" Edward asked, squinting at the letter. My Portuguese was bad, but Edward's was awful. He could order dinner and ask for red wine instead of white and that was about it.

"I'm trying to figure it out. The language is tough, plus Prince John's handwriting is deplorable, honestly."

"May I?" Maria interjected.

"You don't mind?"

"I'm dying to read it, actually," she enthused. I handed over the letter. It was hers, after all.

She cleared her throat and started translating for us.

_March 1805, London_

_My Dearest friend John,_

_Our friends from the island send you their most fervent best wishes and pray you remain steadfast and true to our promise. I swore in your name that we have no intention of betraying our ancient alliance even though we are hard-pressed by our mutual enemies. _

_They are delighted that you continue to receive their gifts, even while pressured by others to refuse them. They assure your majesty that a plan is afoot to bring an end to those water-borne annoyances currently plaguing us. _

_They have conceived of a most unusual new entertainment and wish our assistance in its execution. I know you are always fond of anything diverting and I promised I would lay out all the plans thus far to your majesty. _

_I plan to sail for home next month and shall be anxious for a private audience with my oldest and most treasured friend. _

_Yours in faithful service,_

_Fernando Amaral_

"What does that mean?" Maria asked, lowering the letter in confusion.

"It's all in code," I said. "Or at least, they were trying not to be obvious about what they were discussing, in case the letter was intercepted."

"'Our island friends,'" Edward said. "That's clearly England. That's where Fernando was when he wrote this. You said John sent him sometimes."

"For minor ceremonial stuff."

Edward shrugged a shoulder. "Or maybe for major secret negotiations."

"That part about still receiving gifts… that must be a reference to Portugal still receiving English shipments in its ports even though France and Spain were pressuring them to blockade the British."

Edward leaned forward, almost talking over me in his enthusiasm. "And the part about a plan to end the water-borne annoyances… they're talking about a naval battle with the Franco-Spanish ships. All of that stuff about the unusual new entertainment… that's the Trafalgar Action, Bella. Nelson broke with established naval battle tactics and implemented a new strategy for engagement. They must have been planning it even then."

"And there would have been only one reason they wanted Prince John to be privy to it."

Edward sat back, his eyes locked with mine. Admiral Nelson was Edward's idol. He'd spent his entire academic career on the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson's brilliant win at Trafalgar was one of the touchstones in Edward's life. He'd been really good about indulging me on my quest to prove Portugal had been involved, especially when I knew in his heart that he didn't believe it for a second.

But here it was. A clue—and an incredibly tantalizing one—that I was right and Nelson wasn't a lone genius. Portugal might have been there and helped.

Edward had been caught up in the heady rush of discovery with me, but now that the reality of what we might have uncovered caught up with him, the implications crashed over him, painfully evident in his face. For one crazy second, I wanted to put the letters away and pretend we'd never come. This never happened. The world never had to know.

"Maybe it never went further than talk," I said softly, reaching out to touch his fingers.

He blinked and seemed to remember himself. "We'll never know if we don't keep reading, will we?" His tone was light, but forced. I wanted to talk about this, but now wasn't the time. He was right. I didn't know how long I'd have with the letters and we needed to keep moving. I could worry about rocking Edward's academic world later.

"Maria, what was Prince John's answer?"

She turned the page sideways and began to read again.

_My most faithful friend,_

_I am in your debt for pleading our case with our island friends. Assure them in most impassioned language that I hold our ancient friendship dear and rely on it in these dark times. Their gifts will be welcome in our lands until the last, provided the Lord protect us from the encroaching darkness._

_I am most intrigued by this talk of new entertainments. You are right, I am always fond of a good diversion and I look forward to hearing the details of this new endeavor. _

_I anxiously await your return to our company, although I fear I must impose upon you to spend a little more time with our treasured island friends soon. As you well know, this treasured alliance must be nurtured by one I can trust. I trust no one as I do you, my dear friend._

_Yours,_

_John_

"Wow," Edward said softly when Maria finished.

"It looks like Prince John was on board with whatever England was planning."

"It does," Edward agreed. "But here's the thing. Coordinating a naval battle was no easy task. It's not like they had cell phones. It's one thing for Prince John to agree to offer support in the theoretical sense. There had to be a significant amount of communication going on to make sure the ships were in the right place at the right time. Who took care of that? How was that planned between two countries in war time and in secret?"

It didn't escape my notice that Edward was already talking about the Portuguese ships as a point of fact now, but I didn't comment on that. "Let's keep looking. There might be more of these two-sided letters with Prince John that explain it."

"He must have had a contact in the navy," Edward mused.

"What?"

"However the information was transferred, it must have come in a fairly straight line from Nelson, so the orders would remain intact."

"Well, keep looking. We'll see what we find."

We did find a few more letters between Fernando and John, but they were mostly reinforcing the same sentiments, about upholding the ancient alliance and doing whatever was necessary to protect common interests. There was nothing specifically about Trafalgar and it seemed Fernando came back to Portugal in the spring of 1805.

Edward and Maria were going back over the last of the Prince John/ Fernando letters while I opened up yet another box from 1800-1807 and started sorting its contents. More letters from the chatty teenage cousins. Honestly, what could those girls keep finding to write about? More from the uncle with the complicated land management.

Then towards the bottom of the box, I found a packet of letters, all written on the same heavy cream paper, and bound together with a piece of twine. None of the others were bundled together, so I was already curious. Some tingly spidey sense made me snap a picture of the bundle with my camera phone, just as I found it, sitting on a pile of other family correspondence. I wanted to remember this sense of anticipation and this promise of secrets soon to be revealed forever.

After I carefully loosened the old knot holding them together, I plucked the first letter out of the pile and turned it over. It was addressed to Fernando in a distinctly feminine hand. I unfolded it and found, just like the Prince John/ Fernando letters, it was crossed in two different hands. I already recognized Fernando's as the first. The woman's handwriting was the top one, sent on the return.

"Maria," I called, passing her the first letter. "Look. There are several between Fernando and this woman."

"A woman? That's a bit unusual. If she wasn't family, it would have been rather improper for Fernando to exchange letters with her."

"War pushes people to extremes," Edward said.

Maria turned her attention to the letter and began to read Fernando's part first.

_June 5, 1805_

_Belgrano, Ribafria_

_Dear Miss Swithburne,_

_Forgive me for imposing upon you with my correspondence. I know it's highly unusual and under ordinary circumstances, I would not dream of reaching out to you this way. As you know, however, these are no ordinary times we are living in. _

_When your brother, Admiral Swithburne, introduced us at Lady Mersey's ball last spring, I couldn't help but take note of your interest in our conversation. It was rather dull subject matter for a lady such as yourself, but your impassioned words and your grasp of the minutiae of the issues at hand led me to believe that your brother has already taken you into his confidence in these matters. Your sympathy towards our plight leads me to think you may be willing to be of further assistance._

_As you know, official correspondence between my dear friend and your dear brother would draw attention from many undesirable corners. However, a correspondence between you and myself, although improper in one regard, would raise no __official__ interest. _

_If you would be willing to assist us in this manner, please cross my words with your own and return the enclosed to me. At least all evidence of our connection will lay with me and you may be assured that I will guard it with my life. I would do everything in my power to prevent your reputation from being stained. If I go too far and assume too much, then please destroy this letter and think on it no more._

_However, if I may be so bold, I sensed a certain revolutionary spirit in you that night. Something tells me I have chosen the right person to entrust with my secrets._

_Yours faithfully,_

_Dom Fernando Amaral_

Maria scarcely drew a breath before turning the page to read the response.

_June 10, 1805_

_London, England_

_Dear Dom Fernando,_

_Indeed, your instincts guided you true. I fear my dear brother, naval genius that he may be, often forgets that I am a sister and not a brother, and one several years his junior at that. He has long made a habit of confiding all his thoughts and secrets to me, including those about your friends and your situation. I know far more about the naval battle plans of England than any well-bred woman should. My brother is fortunate that I find it almost as interesting as he does. Most sisters would not be so indulgent._

_I have long felt a great deal of helpless anger at your plight. The __French Menace__ has run roughshod across Europe and now has your fair country in his sights. Your letter has brought me a great deal of satisfaction and joy, as I have desperately wished to do more and lacked the means to, owing to my sex and station in life. _

_Please do not speak of an imposition. I wish to be of use, and if I may be of assistance to you and my dear brother in this way, I am delighted to do it. Do not concern yourself with any taint on my reputation. Your plan of returning all correspondence should eliminate the possibility of discovery on this end. In any case, that revolutionary spirit you spoke of has already done a great deal to scare away potential suitors. I'm of rather an advanced age to be worried about my delicate girlish reputation. I'm made of rather stern stuff, you'll find, and can withstand a good deal of gossip for a worthy cause. Your cause, Dom Amaral, is indeed most worthy._

_Please write back at your earliest convenience and tell me in what way I might be of service to you. I promise you that your trust is well-placed in me._

_Yours,_

_Julia Swithburne_

Slowly, Maria let the letter drop to the table and looked up.

"Holy shit," I muttered, unable to filter myself under the circumstances.

"Fuck," Edward said, apparently having the same problem.

"Oh, my," Maria said. "I'd better have Beatriz bring us some dinner. I think we'll be here for a while."

She pushed away from the table and hurried out. I reached out and slid the letter across the glossy wood surface. I looked at Fernando and Julia's letters crossing each other on the page, the proof of a secret alliance formed, a conduit for sensitive naval information.

"This was how they did it," I whispered. "Admiral Swithburne gave the orders to his sister, who passed them on to Fernando Amaral in these letters. Then he passed it on to the king in person. Oh, God…"

Suddenly, I was so overwhelmed that I had to bend over at the waist and drop my head between my knees. To my horror, my eyes started watering and I couldn't breathe. "Oh god oh god oh god…"

"Hey!" Edward slid forward off his chair, crouching at my side, one hand on my back and the other stroking my hair. "Bella, breathe. This is a good thing, right? You just found the equivalent of a historic smoking gun."

I sat back up and waved my hands helplessly in front of my face, trying to get my rampaging emotions under control. "I just… oh my God. I wanted to find it. My gut told me it was out there. But then to actually find it… I don't…"

"It's a once in a lifetime find, Bella. You get that, right? This is going to define your entire career."

"You're not helping at all with the freak-out thing. You suck at calming me down."

He chuckled and moved his hands to cup either side of my neck. "Maybe this will work better."

And then he kissed me. Not a sweet peck on the lips, not a soft, lingering kiss. He pulled me in close and kissed me, all open mouths and urgent tongues and scraping teeth.

I was already so strung out and emotional and Edward's kiss took me from zero to sixty. In seconds, I was kissing him back, fisting my hands in his hair, shifting in my seat to wrap my legs around his hips. He kissed the corner of my mouth, the tip of my chin, the underside of my jaw. I closed my eyes and let my head drop back, all the energy of the day coursing through me.

"Calmer now?" he mumbled, his voice a low vibration across my skin.

"Screw you," I sighed. "Now I'm just wound up in a new way."

"Whatever works."

"Edward, I have to finish reading these letters."

"I know you do. And now you've stopped panicking. You're welcome."

I growled and pushed him away just as Maria came back into the library.

"I've asked Beatriz to make us a little dinner before she leaves for the day. Have you read the next letter?" she asked, her eyes bright with excitement.

"Uh, no. We were waiting for you." And making out like teenagers.

"Oh… thank you." Maria's face was all soft smiles. She was genuinely touched at being included in the discovery. My heart swelled a little. She really was the nicest woman. I was so glad these letters now lived with her.

"So," I said, touching the stack of letters lightly. "Are we ready to read on?"

Maria nodded eagerly and Edward scooted closer, so I drew the next one out of the pile and unfolded it carefully before passing it over to Maria.

For the next two hours, as the light outside grew golden and then faded, we listened, the three of us with our heads close together. Maria's lovely voice rose and fell as she read first Fernando's letters and then Julia's replies. Edward's hand moved across the table until his fingers found mine. I clutched his hand as we listened.

With every line, my discovery grew more profound– and heartbreaking. Julia Swithburne was indeed passing Nelson's naval orders to Portugal via her brother, the Admiral. Fernando was receiving her orders and passing them on to his best friend, the Prince of Portugal. That was all absolutely true.

But something else was happening in the letters. Fernando and Julia were falling in love. It was all couched in their Regency manners and upper-class reserve, but it was undeniably there. When I thought about it, I could sense his admiration in the very first letter, and her respect was evident from the outset as well. Over time, it grew into more on both sides.

Each letter would start out dealing with the business at hand. Changes of plans were discussed, new orders were issued. Then at the end, they each inevitably ventured into the personal.

From Fernando:

_While I am glad that Lady Whitby's card party allowed your brother the opportunity to speak in private with the ambassador, I am saddened to hear that you were trapped with such underwhelming companions at your table. It pains me to hear that you were left out of the greater conversation, since I know first-hand how very much you have to offer in such discussions. It must have been exceedingly frustrating for you._

From Julia:

_I confess, spending the evening entertaining Mr. Roberts was indeed a trial, but diverting his attentions allowed my brother the freedom to engage the ambassador in the way he wished. Listening to Mr. Roberts wax rhapsodic about horticulture was a small price to pay, although if I may judge from his sentiments at our parting, I fear I shall be enduring his company for some time to come. So you see? My sacrifice for the cause is grave and ongoing._

From Fernando:

_Miss Swithburne, you know how greatly I esteem your brother, the Admiral, but please set my mind at rest on this score. Assure me that he does his duty as your brother and only guardian in cases such as these. Please tell me that he intervenes on your behalf and sends unworthy swine like Mr. Roberts on their way and that you are not left on your own to spurn unwanted advances from undesirable gentlemen._

From Julia:

_I did not mean to stir such concern on your behalf, Dom Amaral. Indeed, my brother is at times quite distracted and consumed by his duties. As you know, the naval situation is most dire and requires all he can give. But do not fear on my account. I have not lived seven and twenty years without learning how to dissuade the odd unpleasant suitor. I am more than capable of managing Mr. Roberts and his horticulture. I need only drop the pretense of female gentility I adopt in polite society. You have seen glimpses of the real Julia Swithburne and you know how off-putting I can be to the opposite sex. I am rather snappish when I fail to remind myself not to be._

From Fernando:

_Yes, I like to think I've been fortunate enough to glimpse the real Miss Swithbourne, but trust me when I promise you this: there is nothing at all off-putting about you. You are a woman of uncommon intellect, courage and principals. Coupled with your abundant physical charms and it is no wonder that Mr. Roberts finds himself at your mercy._

_I'm afraid your last letter did little to dispel my concerns about your suitors. Would that I was there. I could act in your brother's stead and protect you from such unpleasant and unwelcome addresses. Indeed, it angers me that one so unworthy as this Mr. Roberts dares disturb you with his attentions. _

From Julia:

_You take the situation far too seriously. You know I am half in jest and greatly exaggerate the burden of Mr. Roberts' addresses. Besides, if you were here, I do not think I would wish you to act as a brother to me. _

_May I impose upon you to call me by my given name? I wish you would call me Julia. Miss Swithburne is so very proper and not at all fitting. I feel this endeavor we have embarked upon together gives us leave to drop such formal means of address, don't you?_

From Fernando:

_Tell your brother that all is progressing as planned here. My dear friend understands what is expected of us and we shall not fail you. Let us hope that soon we may put this darkness behind us and turn our energies to happier endeavors._

_If I am to call you Julia, then you must call me Fernando. I feel we know each other well enough at this juncture. I should say, I feel I know you very well. Indeed, there are times when I feel closer to you than I do to anyone else._

_I am indeed used to your teasing. I would hope that if you were ever in real distress, you would not hesitate to tell me. I would assist you in any way in my power, Julia. However, were I there, I do not think I would wish to act as your brother, either._

From Julia:

_All is in readiness. I have described to you above the final orders for the great event. My brother sends his best wishes and hopes that God is with your ships as well as his._

_So let us be agreed then, if you were here, you would in no way act as a brother to me._

_Will__ you be here again? Is it wrong of me to say that I hope I shall meet with you again someday?_

From Fernando:

_All preparations are complete here. My dear friend, the Prince, sends his best wishes and prayers to your brother and his men._

_You __will__ meet with me again someday, Julia. I fear I cannot fix on a day. These times we live in present a great many obstacles, and I have obligations here at home that command my time and attention at present. If the worst should happen, my duty is to remain at the Prince's side. However, I hope that at some date not too far into our future, circumstances will finally allow me to act for my own happiness. And at that time, I assure you, I shall see you again in England._

_Until then, I remain as always,_

_Your Fernando_

It was nearly nine p.m. when we finished the last letter in the packet. They stopped just shy of the Traflagar Action, in October of 1805. The information exchanged was incontrovertible. Britain had instructed Portugal via the letters exchanged by Julia and Fernando, guiding their secret involvement in the battle. They were not to engage, only to draw off the Franco-Spanish fleet's attention, allowing Nelson to maneuver the British ships into position to attack. It worked. Nelson blew through the enemy lines and decimated the fleet. And Portugal had been there for it.

As the three of us sat back in stunned silence, Maria pulled a tissue from the pocket of her sweater and dabbed at her eyes.

I had all the proof I needed to write a game-changing book. Every single thing I hoped to prove was proven, but I still felt dissatisfied. When the letters ended, Julia was still in England and Fernando was still in Portugal.

"I wonder what happened to them," I said out loud.

"He died," Maria said with a sniff.

"What?" I sat up straighter. In all my research, I had failed to note the date of Fernando's death. Or maybe I had read it, but it had meant nothing to me at the time.

"He died in Brazil, a year after they went into exile. One of those tropical fevers."

"Oh." I didn't know how it was possible to feel such despair when I just got everything I ever wanted. For one crazed moment, I would have traded the proof of Portugal's naval involvement if I could just find out that Fernando went to England and found Julia. That they had ended up together.

"It's such a terrible shame, isn't it?" Maria sighed, glancing across the letters scattered on the table.

"Yes."

"Bella," Edward said, laying a hand on my forearm. I blinked and came up out of my fog. "We should go. It's over an hour back to Lisbon."

"Oh, of course. Maria, I'm sorry I got so carried away. It's just these letters…"

"No, no!" she protested. "No apologies. And you'll be back tomorrow to finish, yes?"

I smiled at her enthusiasm. "You do understand how significant this find is, don't you? I need to document this, and I'll be writing a book. Maybe two."

"Of course, you'll come back for any information you need. It's time, isn't it? That the world should see their story?" Her eyes were bright and glassy in the low light from the library table lamps.

"Yes," I agreed, "It's definitely time."

*0*0*

We'd been driving back towards Lisbon for half an hour in silence. Edward was the one to break it.

"For somebody that just won the historian's lottery, you seem awfully quiet. What are you thinking?"

I shook my head. "Just… overwhelmed, I guess. It's so depressing that it didn't work out. I bet Julia ended up a spinster. Hell, she already _was_ a spinster and then…"

"What?"

"She met him and he _got_ her. Did you hear what she said about being too out-spoken, too off-putting? She just… well, she kind of reminded me of me."

Edward's eyebrows shot up. "You? How do you see that?"

I gave him a disbelieving look. "You know that's exactly what you used to think about me. All that and a whole lot worse. You just didn't use all those pretty nineteenth-century words for it."

"Yeah, but that was before I really got to know you. You're not out-spoken, you're opinionated. And you're not off-putting. You just fight like hell for what you want."

"So did she. And he _got_ her. And then he died. That just really sucks."

Edward nodded slowly. "It does suck. But you know what doesn't suck? The story you're going to write about them. Maybe Fernando and Julia never got their happy ending, but you're about to give them the next best thing. Immortality."

I smiled and reached across in the dark of the car until I could rest my hand on his thigh. "Thank you. I think I forgot to tell you that while I was in there fighting away for what I wanted. It means a lot to me that you're here for this. That you helped me so much."

His teeth flashed white in the dark. "See? Who said you were a ballbuster? You're a creampuff."

"_You_ said it. All the time. You used to call me Little Napoleon."

Edward's mouth fell open and he made an unintelligible squeak of outrage. "I did not!"

"Edward. Shut it. Everybody called me that in grad school. And you started it."

He opened his mouth, but apparently couldn't think of anything to say, so he shut it again. Then after a moment, he tried again. "It was only because of your concentration. The Napoleon thing."

"And because I'm a ball-buster."

"A little. But in the best kind of way."

"I don't think there's a good way to get your balls busted."

"If you're doing the busting, I'm willing to see for myself."

"Is that an innuendo?"

"Nope. It's an invitation."

*0*0*

By the time we exited the elevator on our floor, I felt exhausted. Drained. My feet sunk into the insanely plush carpet lining the hall as I trailed after Edward to the door. He swiped his key card and let us in. I followed him inside, but paused just inside the door when he didn't turn on the light.

"Edward? Is something wrong?"

The French doors were still open, and a soft breeze blew through the room, smelling of sea salt and flowers. The moon was full, so as I stood there, my eyes adjusted to the silver light. I could pick out the edges of furniture and the snowy expanse of the bed.

"Nothing wrong." His voice, when he spoke, was low and right next to my ear. I jumped and a chill raced down my spine as his warm breath hit my neck.

I let my bag full of books and papers slide off my shoulder and hit the floor with a thump.

"Do you know what my favorite part of today was?" Edward asked. His fingers touched the small of my back and his palm flattened out against my skin. My exhaustion drained away, replaced by a humming awareness. In the dark, I could hear every tiny move he made, even the rustle of his clothes as he breathed on my neck. He leaned in a little closer and I could almost feel his lips on my skin. I sighed and closed my eyes.

"Making an unparalleled historic discovery?"

"No."

"Having a front row seat to the re-scripting of the most important naval battle of the nineteenth-century?"

"Nope."

"Sofia the dog humping your leg?"

"Uh-uh. Although she was hot."

I turned my head just a little, ready to engage him instead of just playing along. "What was your favorite part of today, Edward?"

He slid his palm straight up my spine, up under my hair, to cradle the back of my neck. "That moment in the library, standing next to you, before we'd opened any of the boxes."

I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His lips were slightly parted, the bottom one sheened where he'd licked it. His eyes were half-closed, dark and shadowed. "The anticipation…"

"The smell of the paper…"

"The dust…"

"Jesus Christ, I wanted you so badly."

"Me too. On the table."

"Yessss."

He groaned and we fell on each other, a frantic scramble of lips and hands and tangled limbs, as we stumbled across the room towards the bed. When we hit it and began to fall, Edward twisted us. My back hit the bed and he hit me. In seconds, he was on me, kissing me, pushing up on the bed, levering himself over my body.

His hand slid down my side, wrapping around my thigh and hitching it up over his hip. When his hips hit mine, I moaned into his mouth. He bit my bottom lip just as his hands slipped up under my shirt. I arched my back in an invitation. I wanted him to take off my shirt, put his mouth on me. Either one. Both. He complied. With both.

My shirt and my bra were a memory. Edward's long-fingered, talented hands were touching every inch of my bare skin while he took care of my breasts with his mouth.

"God, that feels good," I moaned, fisting my hands in his hair. I could feel him smile against me before he nipped me again with his teeth. I hissed and then held my breath as his palm slid down over my belly to the waistband of my jeans. He started to follow his hand down with his lips, but I grabbed the back of his shirt and tugged. It was time for my beautiful man to be more naked.

He reared back and pulled his shirt off over his head, flinging it far across the room. He started to lean back over me, but he stopped, just looking at me instead.

"What?" I asked.

He reached out and ran his fingertips from the base of my neck, straight between my breasts, and down over my stomach. "You look so beautiful right now," he murmured. He did, too. The moonlight was picking out the planes and edges of his perfect face, making his eyes glint.

"You, too."

"I wanna do this with you in a library some time."

"Do what?"

His hand slipped under the waistband of my jeans. "This. You. Me. Hot throw-down sex. Library. God, doesn't that sound like the hottest thing ever?"

I growled and reached for him, gripping the back of his neck and pulling his mouth back down to mine. He kissed me back, working my pants open and his hand inside. His fingers hit the mark and I gasped, shutting my eyes tight as he wound me up unbelievably fast. I must have had a lot of tension to work out.

"We can't have sex in a library," I moaned.

"Sure we can. If we're quiet. Can you be quiet, Bella?"

"Oh, Jesus, not now I can't."

And then I wasn't quiet. Not at all. There was no possible way to be quiet as Edward's fingers worked their magic on me and pushed me straight into a mind-blowing orgasm.

"Need you now," Edward muttered. I was still a boneless, post-orgasmic puddle, but he was a frantic blur, pulling my jeans and panties down over my feet, tugging me further onto the bed, stripping off the rest of his own clothes.

He shifted his weight over me and my legs fell open for him. "We _have_ done it in a library," I said, just as he lined himself up with me. Why was I still talking about this?

"Huh?" Edward must have wondered the same thing.

"Sex. In a library. We did it in grad school. Kind of a lot."

"Oh, yeah. Good times," Edward said with a grunt as he pushed into me. I arched back, burying my head in the pillow. "But our carrels don't count."

"Why not?" He set up a hard, urgent pace. I had no idea why I was still trying to have this conversation, because what he was doing to my body was making it hard to remember to breathe, never mind converse coherently.

"That was like my office. The door locked. Not the same thing at all. I'm thinking…" Edward dropped his head into the crook of my neck, pressing his lips to my skin and then whispering in my ear. "the Rare Books Room."

"Oh, God."

He pushed up on his forearms, picking up his pace. I couldn't do anything but hang onto him as every sex-saturated muscle in my body tightened and I raced towards the edge all over again. Edward was gasping, loud, punishing breaths, as his body pistoned over me.

"You want it too, don't you?"

"You? Sex? Rare books?" I gasped. "Oh, yeah."

"So fucking hot," he moaned. And I was done. Everything went white-hot. He was right behind me, his hands digging into my hips as he shouted my name into the dark.

Many long quiet moments later, we lay spent and slightly sweaty, our legs and hands tangled in each other.

"We are such freaks," I muttered.

"Speak for yourself. I, for one, find nothing wrong in being aroused at the thought of a good, well-stocked library. Especially if my hot girlfriend is naked in the middle of it."

I rolled over onto my stomach, propping my chin on his chest. He raised a hand to smooth my hair out of my face. I felt exhausted, elated, overwhelmed… and most importantly, ridiculously in love.

"You'd better control yourself at Maria's tomorrow. The last thing that nice woman needs is us defiling the family archives."

He chuckled and I felt the vibrations through my whole body. "I wouldn't dream of it. There's no way I'd distract you from what you need to get done in that archive tomorrow."

In a flash, the enormity of the day caught up to me, all the things that had happened and everything I'd learned. "Oh, my god, Edward. It really happened, didn't it?"

He smiled the moonlight glinting off his perfect white teeth. "Bee Girl, not only did it happen, today was only the beginning."

I pushed up until my face was over his. I ran a finger down his temple, over his cheekbone and over his chin. "For both of us. I want you there with me for every second of it, Edward. I know this wasn't the story you set out to find, and what we learned today really messed things up for you in some ways. But I still want you with me. On my side. If you're not there, it's almost like it didn't really happen."

I saw the emotion flash across his face and he reached up to grip the back of my neck. "Bella, you think I really care about that? I'd happily be proved wrong a thousand times over if it means you can be proved right the way you were today. Because I _am_ on your side. Screw history, screw the facts. I'm rooting for you. Always you."


	5. Fernando Part 3

_Two years later_

"No, no, no! A ship approaching at that angle would never be properly positioned to rake his adversary's ship." Edward was stabbing a finger into the laminated map being held by a frightened-looking P.A.

I gripped the rail and tried to concentrate on the script revisions I'd just been handed. They wanted to change the order of a couple of scenes in Lisbon. Some detail about the chronology was sticking in my head, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. I tried to block out Edward's voice, gearing up for one of his trademark rants about historical accuracy, so I could flip through my master timeline bible and find the fact that was eluding me.

"Chelsea," I called, looking back over my shoulder for my research assistant.

"Yes, Professor Swan?" she was there in a second, pulling her baseball cap down to shield her pale skin from the relentless Spanish sun.

"Chelsea, how many times have I told you? It's just Bella."

"Right, Professor Swan. Did you need something?"

I sighed and gave up. There was no hope for it. The girl was terrified of me. "I need that binder with the Prince John stuff in it. I think I left it in my office below deck."

"Sure thing!" she chirped before sprinting away. I watched her go and then spent a minute looking around myself. The deck of our boat, one of several in the production flotilla, was teeming with people. Consultants like me and Edward, assistant directors, cinematographers, special effects personnel, and an army of P.A.s. I could scarcely believe that we were here, just two short years after our first trip to Portugal.

My discovery in Maria's library was only the tip of my research iceberg. Once I'd laid out the bare bones of my discovery to Kate back at the publishing house, I was summarily ordered back to Portugal to track down every last scrap of information. I took a semester's leave of absence from teaching my classes and Edward and I essentially moved in with Maria for several months while I finished documenting the archives. It was hard work, but wonderful. I missed Belgrano and I missed seeing Maria every day.

Side trips were involved, to England to research Julia Swithburne, and to Brazil, to learn the details of Fernando's death. I was right. Julia died unmarried, living with her brother the Admiral, her whole life.

I spent the next summer back home in Seattle writing the book. I may have been scared to death at first, but there really wasn't any reason to be. Or maybe it was just that such a spectacular story had been dropped into my lap, which made it easy. Regardless, I wanted to do justice to Fernando and Julia, so I threw myself into writing. For several long months, I lived at my laptop. And I lived with Edward. I was keeping such long hours that the only way I ever saw him was to work at his place. Eventually I quit leaving and just like that, we were cohabitating.

Through it all, Edward was my unsung partner in the process, helping me research all my theories and suppositions, bouncing ideas around with me, or just listening to me think out loud. It was my name on the cover, but it was a labor of love by both of us. The book was ours, not mine.

The night after I typed the last paragraph, Edward surprised me with a candlelit dinner in our apartment to celebrate. Over our second bottle of champagne, he surprised me with a ring. After some nonsensical babbling, and a few tears (which I blamed on my stressed-out, sleep-deprived state), I said yes. Then he pounced on me and kissed me all over my face. Then there might have been some amazing sex on the floor of our dining room.

The book was released in November, in time for the holiday season. My camera phone picture of Fernando and Julia's letters, still bundled together and tied with a string, ended up being the cover artwork. Kate made sure the story of the undiscovered letters found its way into a few of the right media outlets and then things _really_ blew up in my face.

The book sold. By the truckload. Then it sold _out_. Completely. Another printing was ordered before we'd even reached Christmas. Then the media stuff started. Never in my life had I wished more that this had been Edward's discovery instead of mine. Edward was born for television. He knew how to smile and schmooze and banter. I had to remind myself not to fidget, to smile now and then, and try and look at least a little happy to be there. Mostly, I had to remind myself to throttle Little Napoleon. Nobody liked her.

But I really didn't have to try too hard. The story sold itself. It succeeded on numerous fronts. The history buffs loved it for the same reasons Edward and I did. PBS and the History Channel both ran hour-long specials about it. Casual readers loved the story of Fernando and Julia, star-crossed lovers doomed by war. The entire country of Portugal went insane for the story. Dom Fernando Amaral was a new national hero. They declared a festival day in his honor and his face was printed on postage stamps.

Next, the movie rights were optioned. There was a long negotiation period, which I mostly stayed clear of, but it led us here, to the deck of this boat off the coast of Cadiz in Spain. In the distance was a flotilla of recreated early nineteenth-century battle ships, positioned to represent Nelson's British Navy and Napoleon's Franco-Spanish fleet as they reenacted the Battle of Trafalgar. And Edward, the naval historian for the movie, was currently berating one of the assistant directors about the historical inaccuracy of the position of one of the ships. God, I loved him.

The harried assistant director in question departed below deck to consult with some special effects person and Edward stomped over to me.

"Broadside!" he shouted, waving his arms in the air. "They wanted to put them broadside! 'But the shot is so much more dynamic if we can shoot along the length of both boats at the same time'." Edward rolled his eyes as he mimicked the crew person. "If Nelson lines up broadside to the French, then it's not the _Trafalgar Action_ anymore! It's just some ordinary old naval battle!"

"Did you tell them they were crazy and uninformed?"

"In slightly more colorful language, yes. He went off to reset the shot."

"See? It'll be fine."

"How about you? Any ugliness in the script revisions?"

"Oh, you know, the usual. 'Can we have that scene with Prince John and Fernando happen a year later?' Sure. Fernando is dead by then, but I'm sure no one will notice that part."

Edward laughed and slipped his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my shoulder. "It's a whole new world, huh?"

I snorted. "You could say that. I miss the library, where facts are facts and the quality of the light doesn't mean shit."

He kissed my shoulder and squeezed. I sighed, letting myself relax into his chest.

"Tell me this is worth it, Edward."

He pointed over my right shoulder, to the south, and to a cluster of five ships set apart from the others. The Portuguese ships. "It's worth it."

"Promise that we never have to work on another movie ever again."

"We never have to work on another movie ever again. We'll go back home and never leave the library."

I nudged him in the ribs. "You still have to finish your dissertation, anyway."

He scoffed. "I'll get to it. I have to finish the book first."

"Bragger."

I wouldn't shut up to Kate about Edward's contributions to my research and in the end, he wound up with a book deal, too. Of course he did. There was a time in my life when his ridiculous good fortune would have made me rage, but that was a long time ago. Now, the good things that happened to him happened to me, too. That's how partnerships worked.

"Hey, we only have a few more weeks left for this on-location stuff. What do you say we sneak in a little vacation when we get back to dry land?"

"We still have all the court location stuff to do in Budapest," I protested. Hungary was standing in for early nineteenth-century Portugal, for mysterious movie reasons I would never understand.

"I looked at the schedule. We have about four days before we need to be in Budapest."

"That's not enough time to go anyplace, Edward."

"It's enough time to go to Belgrano," he said softly, just behind my ear.

"Oh," I breathed. "That sounds nice."

"You know what also sounds nice? Marrying you on Maria's back terrace."

"What?"

"Let's get married at Belgrano."

"But…"

"Are you backing out, Swan?" he challenged, digging his fingers under my ribs. I laughed and twisted away.

"No, not at all. But we're American and that's Portugal. I'm sure there's paperwork we need. And procedures to follow or something."

"We happen to be working on an international film crew. They have all kinds of legal types that live to get the proper documentation in place. And it just so happens, I know the chick who wrote the book they're basing this movie on."

"You do, huh? You think she'd do you a favor?"

"If I promise to return it. In hot, naked ways."

I turned in his arms until I was facing him and linked my hands behind his neck. "I'll make you a deal. You get the paperwork and I'll marry you at Belgrano."

Edward's smile was wide. "Buy yourself a dress in Cadiz, Bee Girl, because you're getting married next month."

I smiled back at him, not at all displeased by that prospect.

"What a crazy life, Edward," I said, overwhelmed for just a moment by where we were and what we were doing.

"Yeah, crazy. But you know what? I wouldn't change a thing."

"You think I would? Being with you, loving you, has been the biggest adventure of my life. All this," I waved a hand at the historic naval battle being staged around us, "is just another great story to tell one day."

Edward beamed down at me, the Spanish sun turning his hair and eyes crazy-beautiful colors. "And we both know, you tell one hell of a story."

"_We_ do. We tell an amazing story."

He leaned down and kissed me, soft and lingering. "I want to tell it with you forever."

*0*0*

**Lengthy historical A/N:**

I did a LOT of research for this, but I'm no historian, so go easy on me if I got some things wrong. Also, I played pretty fast and loose with history when it suited the story. :)

**Things that are real:**

Prince John VI of Portugal- Acted as regent 1799-1816 and ruled as King John VI 1816- 1826.

The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373- Although Portugal's reasons for trying to uphold it probably had more to do with money and less with honor, as I depicted here.

The Trafalgar Action, which took place on October 21, 1805. However, there were no Portuguese ships there.

The Portuguese royal family's exile in Brazil- Portugal fell to Napoleon in 1807 and the royal family, with about 1,500 subjects, fled to their colony in Brazil, under British naval protection. They remained there until 1821.

The Portuguese National Archives, which is really called Torre de Tomba and it really is a concrete block of a building.

Palacete Chafariz d'el Rei- Their hotel in Lisbon. You can google it. It's really pretty.

**Things I made up:**

The Portuguese involvement in the Trafalgar action. That win was all England and Admiral Nelson, to Edward's eternal relief.

Dom Fernando Amaral and his entire family, including Maria and Sofia the dog.

Admiral Swithburne and his sister, Julia.

Belgrano, although it is based on Quinta de Ribafria, which is real. You can google it for pictures. It's beautiful.


End file.
